


:!«! ||{jj 



WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH OUR UNCLE SAM? 



BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 




Class H N (o 1 
Book , (VH 
Gopightlf 

CCKEIGHT DEPOSIE 



What's the Matter With Our Uncle Sam? 

OR 

Building a Christian Democracy 

By 

OTTO MUTZ 



A Christian Democracy is a Republic that furnishes 
the means of educating its electorate, and the ma- 
chinery through which that electorate can speak 



1922 

WOODRUFF PRESS 
LINCOLN, NEBR. 






^ 



Copyright 1922 

OTTO MUTZ 

Lincoln, Nebr. 



PRICE: 

Cloth Bound, - $1.50 

Paper Bound, - 1.00 

Sent Postpaid to any Address 



APR 21 1922 
;i.A659708 



Introduction 



CONTENTS 
Chapter I 



Chapter II 

What is Life? 12 

Chapter III 
The Blight of War 20 

Chapter IV 
A World Peace 37 

Chapter V 

The Nation's Dance of Death 45 

Chapter VI 

Government by Party 78 

Chapter VII 
Competition 101 

Chapter VIII 
Arbitration 117 

Chapter IX 
Industrial Peace 137 

Chapter X 
The Peril of American Cities 163 

Chapter XI 

The Problem of Over-Kiches 178 

Chapter XII 

To the Christian Churches of America 199 

Chapter XIII 

To the Newly Enfranchised Women of America .... 212 

Chapter XIV 

When a Nation Speaks 228 



FOREWORD 

VICTOR HUGO once said, "There is only one thing 
that is mightier than armies, and that thing is an 
idea whose time has come." The world war, which 
shook the very foundations of the organized governments 
of earth, brought to the American mind one idea whose 
time had come, the idea that "No nation can live to 
itself." 

The same doctrine is today being applied to individ- 
uals. No man can live alone. 

One of the lessons of the great war has been the lesson 
that a distinct individualism cannot build and per- 
manently maintain the rights of great peoples, and fulfil 
the promise of Life, Liberty, and Happiness which was 
the ideal of this republic. 

The architect builds to a well-thought-out plan. The 
painter never dips his brush until, through his mental 
vision, he has seen the finished painting. Thus art and 
architecture have, through their example, made plain 
that perfection in government is possible only as it real- 
izes the vision of its people, for a nation without an ideal 
is like a ship without a rudder, a sail, or a compass. 

No period of history has witnessed such world-wide 
unrest as at this time is shaking the very foundations of 
organized human governments. The unrest is not an 
aftermath of war, for the whole world was a seething 
mass of unrest long before anyone had thought of a 
world war. 

Let the world take note that happiness is not a cause 
of unrest. It never organized a commonweal army. 
It never organized a strike. It never hoisted the red 
flag of anarchy. It never agitated the people for 
political reform. These things have ever been the direct 
cause of unrest and discontent. 

(v) 



vi BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

The ideal of America is Life, Liberty, and Happiness. 

Must America permit it to be truthfully said that the 
finished product of a century and a half of our republic 
is discontent, strife, over-riches, pitiful poverty, and 
political brigandage that permits the exploitation of the 
labor of the nation without conscience ? 

Must we change that proud boast that "Ours is a 
government of the people, for the people and by the 
people," into an humble acknowledgment that instead we 
have built a government of party, for party, and by 
party ? 

The "idea" that Victor Hugo says is "Mightier than 
armies," is to be the central thought of this little book, 
and to bring, at least in some degree, the answer to the 
question, "What's the matter with our Uncle Sam?" is to 
be its mission. 

Five things are fundamental to a reconstruction of 
this government upon a foundation that will insure its 
perpetuity, and realize its ideals of Life, Liberty, and 
Happiness. 

First. The blight of war must be destroyed in the 
world. The spirit of militarism is the demand of organ- 
ized greed. War has ever been its birthright, and battle- 
fields have been its harvests. Partial disarmament is not 
a remedy. The world wants peace. World Peace is 
possible, but it must come through the awakened con- 
science of the governments of the earth. Complete dis- 
armament and an enduring world peace must come, or 
the civilizations of the earth must perish. 

Second. The over-riches of our nation is not in hor- 
mony with the spirit of American institutions. It is the 
direct product of special privilege. If the brand of labor 
is on the rich man's steer, by every righteous judgment 
of the world, the steer must be returned to its owner, 



FOREWORD vii 

for God intended that a nation's wealth should be owned 
by those who created it. It must be returned through 
the mandate of a christian people, for this is the evolu- 
tion of the doctrines of the Christ, applied to a real 
Christian civilization. It must be returned by law. 

Third. Industrial peace. Is just as imperative a demand 
of the world today as disarmament and world peace. It 
is so broad in its influence, that it reaches into every coun- 
try of the world. Its solution must effect every industry 
that is dependent upon the labor of the people. It is 
the most complex problem of the age. Its solution de- 
mands the deepest study, and the application of the 
purest and the broadest Christian spirit that has ever 
been given to the solution of any problem that has en- 
grossed the American mind. 

Fourth. Government by party has failed. The polit- 
ical "Pie Counter" is not a worthy incentive to political 
action. It drives the best men and women from political 
life. It is government by the least, instead of the most 
fit. It must be destroyed, and upon its ruins must be 
built a Christian Democracy that will ever be sensitive 
to the will of the people. Our Bicameral English system 
of law-making must be displaced by a Uni-cameral sys- 
tem in every state and in the nation and the last dregs 
of political misrepresentation in our legislative halls 
must be burned out of our political life by the fires of a 
real American Christian Democracy. 

Fifth. The high cost of government is the Nation's 
"Dance of Death." Unjust taxation has become legal 
confiscation. Wealth has never borne its full share of 
the burdens of government. Personal responsibility 
assessment, and state registration for citizenship, will 
eliminate nearly every dollar of the expense of assess- 
ment, and completely and effectually prevent the tax 



viii BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

dodger from avoiding the payment of his full share of 
the state's taxes. 

A Christian Democracy is the greatest challenge of 
America today. A government of the people, for the 
people, and by the people must be realized, or the nation 
must perish by its own hands. Such a Christian Democ- 
racy must rest upon, and have an abiding faith in the 
principles of majority rule. It must have the machinery 
for qualifying the people for intelligent action. It must 
furnish the machinery through which the government 
can function with' the least possible delay. Every candi- 
date for a seat in congress and for President and Yice 
President must be named in a national Presidential Pri- 
mary, and the quadrennial disgrace of nominating 
candidates for the highest honors within our gift, must 
be cleansed of the taint of dishonor that winks at the 
spending of more money in such contests than would pay 
every salary of every executive officer in the nation for 
an entire quadrennium. The "Pie Counter" must be 
destroyed. That political lie called "The Merit System" 
must be made a realized fact in the American Govern- 
ment. 

These are the ideals of a Christian Democracy that this 
nation must build when the dregs of unrighteousness of 
"Government By Party" shall have been burned out of 
the political life of this great Christian Republic. 

This little book is respectfully dedicated to the Christ- 
ian churches of America, to the newly enfranchised wo- 
men, and to that great army of men and women whose 
lives under the handicaps of our industrial plutocracy 
give them no promise that in their old age they may own 
a home of their own, and no promise for the future of 
their children. 

The Author. 



Chapter I 
INTRODUCTION 

Every student of human affairs is confronted with the 
fact that man exists, We are here. We have a being. 
We are possessed with intelligence. Wherever we look 
we see the unmistakable evidences that the wonderful 
creation all about us is, in one way or another, adapted 
to the needs of man. We drink the water. We breathe 
the air. We cultivate the fields that they may bring 
forth the fruits of earth. We bask in the warm sun- 
shine, and our hearts are lifted up in praise to God as 
we see the springing of new life all around us, invited 
and tempted by sunshine and shower. 

In the heavens above us the sun reigns as the great 
king of the universe, and among the starry hosts of 
heaven rides the moon as the beautiful queen of the 
night. Her soft light sheds its benediction upon the 
world and guards its slumbers. 

What is the meaning of all this wonderful creation? 
The philosophers of every age have attempted to answer 
this question, but every attempt has brought to the 
world new questions, new facts, new theories, and new 
definitions. 

Is the question answered in Holy Writ? Holy Writ 
is the world's Bible, and the first four words of that 
immortal book are, "In the beginning God." 

In that book we are told that it was Gocl who created 
the heavens, in which He placed the sun, to give us 
light by day, and the moon, to give us light by night. 

Out in the great illimitable space of God's creation 



2 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

are countless millions of worlds, and suns, and stars, 
each traveling on through space with the precision of 
God's unchangeable laws. No conflict. No uncertainty. 
Man looks on in awe and wonder. 

This wonderful message says that He created the earth 
with its wide flowing rivers, its majestic forests, its 
lordly mountains with their hidden wealth of minerals, 
their retorts of gas, and their forests of coal. He 
created a kingdom of animals, and a kingdom of veg- 
etables, and then, after He had pronounced it all good, 
He said, "Let us create man in our own image." 

Adam was the first man and Eve was the first woman 
who ever beheld the beauties of this world of God's 
great creation when He placed them in the Garden of 
Eden. In that Garden of Eden, fresh from the hand of 
God, and all unprofaned by the hand of man. 

The first command that was ever given to man was 
the command given to Adam and Eve when God said, 
"Of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil 
thou shalt not eat, for on the day that thou eatest 
thereof thou shalt surely die." 

Poor, weak, deluded Adam ! Created in the image of 
God, and surrounded by everything that had been 
created for his comfort and happiness, in his weakness, 
he stamped upon the whole human family the desire to 
possess forbidden fruit. 

God fixed the penalty for that first sin upon Adam, 
and through him upon the whole human family, when 
He said to Adam, "Out of the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground." 

This penalty has never been removed. It stands to- 
day as it stood when the words were spoken. The words 
were not spoken to Adam alone, but to the teeming mil- 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

lions of his children who were destined to make up all 
the generations of men who should follow him. They 
were spoken to you and to me, as much as they were 
spoken to Adam. No man can escape that penalty. No 
excuse can remove the obligation. The right to live is 
the duty to work. 

Wilful, stubborn, selfish man ! Have you not in every 
generation tried to avoid the payment of that penalty? 
Have you not eaten the fruits of the labor of others? 
Have you not applied at the great storehouses of the 
world for the good things of life, and refused to earn 
them by the sweat of your face? Did you not establish 
among men the doctrine of "The divine right of kings?" 
Did not those kings compel the weaker member of so- 
ciety to pay tribute to their kingly powers? Have you 
not sent your armies of conquest to overcome the weaker 
nations of the earth, and held them in bondage to do 
the work that you should have done? In every genera- 
tion have you not claimed rights that God intended you 
should claim only after you had paid the penalty of 
Adam's sin? 

If these things are true, Oh Man! you must account 
for a broken law. God's laws are inexorable. His pen- 
alties are just. In His own good time He will call you 
to account. You cannot rightly claim your inheritance 
from God's great bounty until the condition, "Out of 
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," is met. 

A beautiful sunset was painting pictures upon the 
landscapes of Eden. Out in yonder valley was Cain, the 
firstborn child of earth, a tiller of the soil, and on yon- 
der hills was Abel, a keeper of flocks, each bringing an 
offering to the Lord. 

History fails to record how dispute arose between 



k BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

them, but when Cain met Adam, and Abel came not, 
Adam said to Cain, "Where is thy brother Abel,*' Cain 
replied, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?" 

That question has come ringing down through all the 
ages to the present time. Am I my brother's keeper? 
Theologians in every generation have tried to answer it, 
but in the lives of men it has never been answered. 
Might won in the conflict, and from that day — that 
fateful day — might has ruled the world. Nation has 
met nation in open conquest, and to physical force the 
world has bowed in humble submission. Ages have 
come and gone. Nations have risen and decayed, but the 
sovereign power of the iron hand of autocracy has 
never been successfully disputed. 

Two thousand years ago a babe was born in Bethle- 
hem. Ever}^ year we celebrate his birthday. Two thou- 
sand years ago a man died on a cross. We are still 
observing that clay and someone is asking. Why? I 
will tell you why. It is because of the beauty and the 
shining glory of his life, his deeds, his message, his 
death, and his triumph over death. 

Four thousand years of human history had passed. 
The human family had groped in the darkness of despair 
all these years, but this man brought to the world a new 
philosophy of life. He taught the world the doctrine 
of the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man. 
He taught it the doctrine of love and service. 

Is someone saying that Christ came to the world to 
save it from sin? Not so. Christ did not come to save 
the world, but to teach the world that new philosophy 
of life, and to make it possible that the world might 
save itself. 

The restless mind of man has ever looked out into the 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

unknown for the answer to the unsolved problems of the 
world. A vision troubled the heart of a noble son. The 
queen hearkened to his plea, and Columbus set sail out 
into the great unknown ocean toward the setting sun. 

Does the world realize that its civilization has always 
moved toward the setting sun? Well, you know the 
story. Fifteen centuries of a Christian civilization had 
passed when Columbus planted upon the soil of a new 
world the seeds of a new civilization. On came the 
hosts from every land, bringing only one thought, one 
hope, one purpose, one creed, when the pendulum of the 
clock of Father Time swung back as the Pilgrim Fathers 
planted upon the soil of the new world that first prin- 
ciple of a real civilization, Religious Liberty. 

"The breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rock 

bound coast, 
And the woods against a stormy sky their giant 

branches tossed, 
And the heavy night hung dark, the hills and the 

waters o'er, 
When a band of exiles moored their bark on a wild 

New England shore. 

Not as the conquerors came, they the true-hearted came, 
Not with the roll of stirring drums, and trumps that 

seek of fame, 
Not as the flying came, in silence and in fear, 
They shook the depths of the desert gloom with their 

songs of lofty cheer. 

Amidst the storm they sang, and the stars heard, and 
the sea, 



6 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

And the sounding aisles of the dim wood rang to the 

anthems of the free, 
The ocean eagle soared from his nest on the wild wave's 

foam, 
find the rocking pines of the forest roared, this was 

their welcome home. 

VvTiat sought the} 7 thus afar, bright jewels of the mind? 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a 

faith's pure shrine; 
Aye, call this Holy ground, the soil where first they 

trod, 
They've left unstained what here they brought, freedom 

to worship God." 

Those old Pilgrims indeed "sought a faith's pure 
shrine," but oppression was not to end here. A great 
ocean was not to be a barrier to kingly power. Liberty 
was not to be achieved without a struggle. The storm 
clouds that hovered over them, bound them into a closer 
union, for in the new world there were no animosities, 
no rank, no station, no wealth, no kings, and no classes. 

But why tell the story that has so often been told? 
The cherished right of Religious Liberty had been 
planted upon Plymouth Rock, and those old patriots, 
looking into the future, caught a new vision. It was a 
vision of political equality. Time has told the story of 
political evolution, and with the coming of that new 
vision, the old clock was about to swing back to mark 

the dawn of that vision when Have you heard the 

story of Mount Sinai? Well, just as truly as the Ten 
Commandments were written on the tablets of stone by 
the finger of God, the finger of God guided the hand of 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

Thomas Jefferson when he wrote those immortal words, 
"All men are created equal, and endowed with certain 
inalienable rights. Among these are the right to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

Xo angels were there to sing the glad news to an 
anxious world. Xo messenger was sent to tell the story 
to the people, but a new doctrine of human rights had 
been born. 

The doctrine of Human Eights and Eeligious Liberty 
meant to those old patriots the end of kings, and lords, 
and rank, and station, and it came to them as an inspira- 
tion direct from Heaven. 

Upon that foundation this great republic was built 
with a vision of a world full of new hopes, new oppor- 
tunities, new strength, new progress, and improved con- 
ditions for all. 

This vision came to the world after nearly six thou- 
sand years of autocratic power, and now the old world 
was asking, "Can a republic live?" Is the right of 
kings divine?" "Will the laws made by the people be 
respected and obeyed?" and, "Can a people be made to 
understand and respect the principle of majority rule?" 

Xo one will wonder at these questions, because, up to 
this time in human history, human rights had been little 
understood, and little considered. Autocrac}^ had reigned 
supreme. The Old World had asked, "Can a republic 
live?" and there were none to answer from experience, 
for no republic had lived, but that great patriot, Alex- 
ander Hamilton, gave to America a new vision and to 
the world a new hope when he said to his compatriots, 
"It is ours to be the grave in which the hopes of the 
world shall be entombed, or the pillar of cloud that 
light us on to our millennial glory. Let us not forgot 
our immortal trust." 



8 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

More than two centuries have passed since those im- 
mortal words were spoken, since that immortal trust was 
laid upon America, and I ask, is there a red-blooded 
American, living under the folds of Old Glory, who is 
willing that America shall be the grave in which the 
hopes of the world shall be entombed? I know your 
answer, and I cry out with the earnestness of a patriotic 
fervor as I remind you that America is to be the last 
battle ground for the establishment of Human Eights 
and Human Libert}^. Ours is a graver mission than we 
have ever assumed. Jefferson indeed wrote into the 
ethics of the world the right of Life, but this generation 
is asking the question, "What is Life?" He wrote into 
our institutions the right of Liberty, but the world is 
asking today, "What is Liberty?" And then he wrote 
as one of the inalienable rights of man, the right of the 
pursuit of Happiness, but the world wants to know to- 
day if the "Life" and the "Liberty" proclaimed as 
inalienable by Jefferson will secure to the people the 
promise of Happiness. 

Does the world enjoy today the happiness promised 
by Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration? 

Fellow Americans! The new conditions under which 
we live have brought to us new problems. These prob- 
lems are more complex than America has ever faced. 
We are living in an electric age. The world is moving 
as it never moved before. The old car of commercial 
progress is outrunning our machinery for keeping pace 
with that progress. To America has indeed been given 
a sacred mission and an immortal trust. If we fail to 
keep that trust, the world has failed, for America is the 
last hope of the world. 

On a beautiful day in June, I stood on the bank of 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

the great Niagara River. The peaceful waters where I 
stood gave no evidence of the dangers, as the rapids ap- 
proached the falls below. Yonder in the distance I could 
see a little craft in which a company of thoughtless 
youth were basking in the delights of a row in the warm 
June sunshine. Down the river they Avere drifting in 
their care-free spirit of youth, until I could hear their 
happy voices in songs and peals of laughter. Suddenly 
a man came running as he frantically exclaimed in a 
loud voice, "Pull for the shore! The rapids are ahead! 
Danger! Danger! Danger!" 

An excited crowd gathered as he continued to shout at 
the top of his voice, "The rapids are ahead," and "Pull 
for the shore," but the danger was not seen, and the 
call was unheeded as they drifted toward the great falls 
all thoughtless of the impending danger. As we stood 
looking, the rapids caught and swept them faster and 
faster. They saw the danger as the great crowd took 
up the cry of "Danger," and "Pull for the shore," and 
for the first time was heard that awful cry of distress 
and anguish, "Help!" "Help!" "Help!" Throw out 
the lifeline!" "Throw out the lifeline!" But it was 
too late. No man had a lifeline, and no man had the 
power to rescue that happy, thoughtless company from 
certain death. Faster and faster their little bark was 
borne on by the cruel rapids, while on the shore a thou- 
sand people witnessed their plunge over the awful 
precipice. 

Thoughtless America, you are basking in the sunshine 
of youth. You have forgotten everything but the scenes 
around you. Born to a great mission in the world, in 
the exuberance of your youth you have lost the vision 
that was yours. You have forgotten the mission that 
was given you, and you have forgotten God. 



10 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

The cry of clanger is heard on every hand, but you 
will not heed it. The rapids are just ahead and for you 
it is not yet too late, but if you do not heed the cry, if 
you will not turn your face and listen to the cries of 
danger all about you, tomorrow you will be calling, 
"Throw out the lifeline!" 

Young America, so full of promise, so full of oppor- 
tunities, heed the cry before it is too late. You must 
not fail, for in this world's greatest conflict for the 
preservation of those rights so faithfully guaranteed "to 
us by our patriotic forefathers 3^011 must lead the way. 
The contending forces in that great conflict are -at this 
moment surging around the demands of organized greed. 
Organized selfishness has taken little account of Human 
Rights. It has thought only of selfish interests. The 
battle is on, and before the victory shall be won, the 
very foundations of this republic will tremble. This 
great conflict will never end, and the battle will never 
be won, until the rights of every human being under the 
jurisdiction of Old Glory shall be guaranteed by a real 
government of the people, for the people and by the 
people, and that government must be a real Christian 
Democracy. 

Churchmen of America, this is your fight. Mothers 
of America, the power to aid in this great struggle has 
only recently been given you. In your hands, the ballot 
is to be more potent for good than the powerful guns 
of the autocracies have been for evil. If you would be 
worthy queens of our American homes, you will help us 
to christianize those homes by snatching them from the 
clutches of the greatest octopus of wealth that has ever 
gripped the world, and then help us to make those 
homes reflect the spirit of the Master. 

Let every true American who believes in Jefferson's 



INTRODUCTORY 11 

promise of Life, Liberty, and Happiness, arise, and with 
one mighty acclaim say, "To this great call America ivill 



lft BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Chapter II 

WHAT IS LIFE? 

When I was a care-free boy out on the prairies of the 
great West, I had not seriously thought of the question, 
"What is Life?" 

Time, and the responsibilities of manhood have brought 
me face to face with this all-important problem. What 
is the meaning of Life ? Is the Life we see all around 
us what it should be? Is the thing we know as "Life" 
among our fellow men the fulfillment of God's plan for 
the human family? 

To me, life from early childhood has been filled with 
serious experiences. Early manhood brought the prob- 
lem of an education. From that problem, — only half 
solved, — I went out into an unfriendly world only to 
realize that the problems of life multiplied in complexity 
as well as in numbers as time went by. 

Students of biology tell us that the question, "What 
is Life?" has puzzled the wisest philosophers of every 
generation. One who has made a study of the question 
from the standpoint of the world's knowledge a century 
ago says : "In seeking the definition of life, it is difficult 
to find one that does not include more than is necessary, 
or exclude something that should be taken in." 

De Blainville says: "Life is the two-fold internal 
movement of composition and decomposition, at once 
general and continuous." 

Herbert Spencer says : "This conception is in some re- 
spects too narrow and in some respects too wide." 

Summing up the profound wisdom of old school 



WHAT 18 LIFE? IS 

philosophy, one of the wisest of them all has said: "A 
perfect definition of life seems to be an impossibility." 

But these definitions only relate to life in the abstract. 
Jefferson laid down as the inalienable rights of man, the 
right to life, liberty, and happiness, but men sometimes 
build wiser than they knew. Had Jefferson been asked 
what he meant by life, as he used the term, he no doubt 
would have promptly said, "Human life has not always 
been held sacred by the governments of the world. Life 
is a sacred right. Your life belongs to you, and no man 
or government has a right to destroy it until after, in a 
trial by a jury of your peers, you have been convicted of 
a crime for which society may demand it." 

This was a high conception of the value of human 
life from Mr. Jefferson's point of view, and the new 
world applauded it as a step in advance in the world's 
category of human rights. But is this conception not 
too narrow for this generation ? Did not Jefferson build 
wiser than he knew ? Does not life mean all that Jeffer- 
son meant, and more in this era of social development? 
What, then, is life as we would view its promises in this 
generation ? 

There is no doubt that to the multitude of conditions 
that make up the great mass of the human family, the 
answer would be as varied as the conditions under which 
they live. But while this is true, life in an ideal con- 
dition of society means more than a simple existence. 

As I study this question and its relation to the chil- 
dren of men ; as I study the relations of the government 
to the conditions of Life in this home of Liberty and 
Freedom ; as I contemplate the duty of a government to 
its people, I am impressed that I must pursue my study 
of the question out into the realms of human affairs. 
To do this I must call to my aid members of society 



14 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

whose opinions will reflect life as they know it, in order 
to arrive at a conclusion as to its real relations to the 
promise of Jefferson when he set life clown as one of the 
inalienable rights of man. 

I ask a certain rich man, "What is Life?" Here is 
his reply: 

"Life is first of all the right to live, but it is more to 
me. God has been very good to man. In this world are 
all the beauties and benefits of nature, put here by an 
all-wise creator for the comfort and happiness of man. 
Life to me is the enjoyment of all these God-given bless- 
ings to the fullest. In material things God has been 
very good to me, and while the comforts of life have 
always been in easy reach, the luxuries have not been 
denied. To me, the world is a great playhouse in which 
the children of men are expected to enjoy life to the 
fullest. I have no patience with the croakings of dis- 
content that are heard on every hand. I can see no 
reason for complaint." 

As I passed along the street of a great manufacturing 
city I met a woman whose hair was white as snow and 
whose form was bent with years of toil. I said to her, 
"Good mother, your years bespeak wisdom, as well as 
goodness. Will you tell me after your life of long 
years, 'What is Life?" She turned her soft blue eyes 
upon me with an interest that I had not expected as she 
repeated the question, "What is Life?" I paused for 
only a moment as she looked at the ground in a deep 
study, when she turned to me and said, "To me, my 
friend, life has been a struggle for existence. When I 
was a girl, life was full of Hope and Promise. How 
well do I remember the pretty girlish air-castles I built 
in my imagination. I saw in those day dreams a beau- 
tiful home surrounded by comforts and luxuries. One 



WHAT 18 LIFE? 15 

day Donald came into my life, and on a happy day in 
June we plighted our troth and were made one in the 
holy bonds of matrimony. We were full of hope for the 
future, and as happy as care-free children could be. 
Twenty years we lived together, lived, and loved, and 
labored, and hoped. It was not easy, you see, to get 
along in the world and provide for a family. Oh ! how 
we loved the children, and how we promised them an 
education and a fine start in life. But work was short 
sometimes, and there came a time when Donald's worry 
to get bread was more than he could bear. One day he 
took a fever, and in just one week I stood by an open 
grave. I saw my last hope buried there, and turned to go 
back, no, not to a home, for I have never known a home 
to call my own, but back to where I stayed. My hair is 
growing gray now with years of toil and worry. Three 
of our children followed Donald to their future home, 
and the others are here working in the factory. Some- 
where I have read, sir, that 'Hope springs eternal in 
the human soul.' I believed it then, for Donald used 
ever to hope for the future. Not so now; I am older 
now. Years of bitter disappointments and experiences 
have taught me some lessons of life. This is a city of 
factories. Yonder on the hill are beautiful homes, but 
here in the valley are the tenements of toil. Thousands 
have spent their lives here building these mansions and, 
like me, are simply waiting till the good Lord shall call 
us to come home. 

"Yes, I still have hope, but now I hope not for any- 
thing in this man-ruled world, but in a country not 
made with hands eternal in the skies. Some day I shall 
go to meet Donald. Oh, sir, how I dread to leave my 
children to the fate of a life in this city of lost oppor- 
tunity. The factory in this country, sir, closes behind 



16 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

those who enter as laborers the door of opportunity, of 
advancement and of a hope for future betterment. Do 
not ask me 'What is Life,' for the good Lord never in- 
tended that life should be what it has been to me, and 
to those who live in the condition of wage workers. Ask 
me what life should be. I could paint a better picture 
of what life should be, although I have never had a 
taste of its sweetness. Now and then I get a glimpse of 
what seems to me to be the 'ideal thing' some people call 
life, but I have never realized the thing myself. But I 
must go to another day of toil, to be followed bj still 
another. This is life to me, whether it be my God-given 
right or my man-ordained duty." 

To a noted clergyman I propounded the same question 
and he philosophized as follows: "Life, nry brother, is 
what we make it. The good Lord has given His chil- 
dren the earth with all the good things for their com- 
fort and happiness and whether they make the best of 
all these gifts, and get more or less of happiness out of 
them, is entirely with the individual. Life to one man 
cannot mean the same as it will to another. Neither 
does it mean the same amount of labor. Nor yet does 
it mean to all men success. To some it must mean 
failure. Some will get riches, while others will remain 
poor. Some will develop master minds, while others 
will achieve little success. The human family is a 
heterogenous mass of uneven natural abilities, tempera- 
ments and conditions. Every condition is necessary in 
the economic structure of society, and like the many 
good things God has given us for our enjoyment, the 
diversity gives interest to everything. Life and its real 
meaning are best understood when we view them as an 
evolution toward the life that is to come after death." 

A noted sociologist discussed the question as follows: 



WHAT 18 LIFE? 11 

"You have asked me the question, 'What is Life?' 
Frankly I admit that no definition has yet been given 
that seems to compass the whole of life. It is existence 
first, and as such we have a right to look to government 
for its protection. The early governments of mankind 
did not protect man's physical existence. He could be 
executed without trial, and if a brother saw fit to take 
his life, no account was taken of the matter. Life was 
not held sacred, but a new thought was written in the 
conscience of the world, and that thought said, 'Life is 
sacred, and the government owes it protection.' The 
people hailed this new right as a gift from Heaven. It 
was written into the cornerstone of this republic as one 
of the inalienable rights of man. Such is the right to 
life as laid down by the Declaration. Joyously as we 
hailed this new protection, human society is today fixing 
a new meaning to the promise. Indeed, when we look 
at the latter part of the Declaration, we can come to no 
other conclusion. Life, Liberty, and Happiness. If life 
in that promise means existence, the promise may be 
kept as to life, and yet all of liberty and happiness may 
be lost. 

"Life means more than existence. In this world of 
unequal conditions, unequal opportunities, unequal nat- 
ural endowments, were this not true, we would have a 
condition in which the weaker members of society would 
be crowded to the rear and trampled under foot. One 
man cannot today with impunity misuse his brother 
simply because he has superior strength. The law pro- 
tects the weak against the strong, and no one complains. 
This is not a physical age. Intellect rules the world to- 
day, but does the weaker brother enjoy the protection he 
should have from the brother who is intellectually 
stronger in any of the affairs of life? 



18 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

"It was no small matter when the law said to man, 
'Physical power shall no longer rule the world.' But 
under our complex civilization, the world has more to 
fear from those who are intellectually strong than it 
ever had to fear from those who were physically strong. 
Physical strength in the olden time either measured the 
prowess of man against man or was used in the brutal 
conquest of the weaker nation by the stronger, but to- 
day, when mind is master, a few men may undertake 
and carry to a successful conclusion the conquest of a 
nation without the shedding of a drop of blood, aye, 
without even a suspicion on the part of the people of the 
intended conquest. 

The first duty of a good government is the protection 
of its weaker members from the injustice of the stronger. 
The strong are ever able to take care of themselves, 
but you will ask, "Why need protection?*' I answer, 
"By physical power, and in defiance of every principle 
of right among men in every age, the strong have over- 
powered and enslaved the weak/' "Physical slavery is 
abolished in nearly every part of the world today, but 
can it be said that the world is yet free from involun- 
tary servitude?" I answer, "More men and women are 
today giving their lives to an invisible and an involun- 
tary servitude in this boasted land of liberty and free- 
dom than ever at one time were held in bondage in any 
country on earth." I said "invisible and involuntary." 
It is both. If the men who fought from Sumpter to Ap- 
pomattox to free four million black slaves knew that 
the evolution of our modern civilization had enslaved a 
large per cent of all the people in this free country, not 
many suns would set until a new emancipation procla- 
mation would be issued, and not many more suns would 
set before the shackles of industrial slavery would fall, 
and a new era of life would dawn upon the world. 



WHAT 18 LIFE? W 

"What is life? Does a man enjoy the protection guar- 
anteed to him when every cent of his earnings above a 
scant living is demanded and appropriated by others £ 
Does not a man enjoy more than was guaranteed to him 
when, by some machination, he is able to appropriate 
out of the stores of good things produced, without 
effort, more than he can use, while thousands go unfed 
and half clad who have done the honest labor to earn 
their right to them? Is the promise of life kept in its 
real meaning while a hoard of people enjoy the products 
of labor to the fullest when they have never produced a 
penny of wealth? Is the promise of life kept to the 
man who toils from year end to year end, and after the 
most rigid economy is able to lay by nothing for a rainy 
day, while the men we call the 'Captains of Industry,' 
the world's intellectual conquestors, revel in the luxury 
of ill-gotten gain? 

"Men of America ! In this boasted land of opportunity 
you have a right to your share of the good things pro- 
duced if you did your share of the labor that produced 
them. You need it to give you that part of life promised 
by the Declaration. This conception of life is in keep- 
ing with the God-given promises of the modern civiliza- 
tion under which we live. No man, and no nation, can 
give you your life, your existence, and then keep it in- 
violate after he has taken away from 3^011 the product of 
your toil. Life means no less than this in Jefferson's 
Declaration. It must be written into the laws of the 
land, and its impress must be felt in the lives and in the 
homes of all the people." 

This definition will satisfy the longings of the great 
army of men and women who toil, and it will brino- to 
the human family the liberty and the happiness prom- 
ised by the Declaration, and the world must be made to 
realize it in its fullest meaning. 



20 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Chapter III 

THE BLIGHT OF WAR 

The first problem that confronts America and the 
world is the problem of crushing forever the possibility 
of another war. War has blackened the pages of all 
history. It has been the blight of the world since the 
beginning of time. One generation has built, and the 
next generation has destroyed what they built. A desire 
for conquest has been the underlying cause, and the 
power has been the only question. Human rights and 
great principles of government have seldom been the 
underlying causes of the great wars of the world. 

The action of bayonet and bullet in shaping the des- 
tinies of the human family have so long been the potent 
factor that the people have come to think of war as one 
of the necessary evils of government. There are even 
those among us who will still argue that a baptism of 
blood is good for the Nation's ills. 

If our writers could dramatize the peaceful struggles 
of government betterment as vividly as they can picture 
the scenes and horrors of war we might hope for better 
success in driving it out of the land, but while the poet, 
and the painter, and novelist, and our great papers and 
magazines, and historians are portraying in such graphic 
story and song the conflict of war, the stories of civic 
strife in times of peace seem so tame that they are 
neglected. 

It is true that something has been done looking to the 
prevention of war. We had shared with other nations 
the organization of The Hague tribunal, but when the 
whole world was engulfed in the greatest war in all 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 21 

history, in spite of the protests and powers of that 
tribunal, we were obliged to share with the world the 
remorse that comes of disappointed hopes. 

That struggle taught the world that we must have 
some arrangement for the settlement of world disputes 
that would be enforceable without an appeal to arms, 
instead of a code of rules for the enforcement of "hu- 
mane warfare." 

In the war just closed millions of men were killed and 
millions more were wounded. Mankind has been loaded 
with a burden of debt that will not be paid in ten gen- 
erations. Nearly every man that was killed was a white 
man. Every man was a Christian. The Caucasians, the 
highly civilized peoples of the earth, were murdering 
and slaughtering each other while the untutored black, 
brown and red races of the world looked on in astonish- 
ment. Cannot the Christian peoples of the world of 
Caucasian bloods make some arrangement whereby wars 
can be prevented ? This question must be answered, and 
the Christian peoples of the world must answer it. 

Let us not at this moment consider the suffering, nor 
the sacrifices, nor the broken homes, nor the blighted 
hopes that war brings to the world, but let us leave out 
of the discussion for the moment every element of senti- 
ment, and think only of the two phases of war — its 
awful cost and its awful destructiveness. If there were 
no other argument than the argument of destructiveness, 
this alone ought to convince the world that wars must 
cease or the world must perish. I am not thinking alone 
of the destructive engines of war with their power to 
level cities, but more of the power of the newly invented 
appliances for the destruction of human life. The late 
war brought to the world a realization of the destructive 
power of gases, but do we not know that the use of 



22 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

gases in warfare is only in its infancy? If "humane 
warfare" was even considered in the prosecution of the 
world war, it must be written as a fact of history that 
in the emergencies of impending disaster that deadly 
gas that had the power to level whole cities was the 
most inhuman element of warfare that the world has 
ever witnessed. 

Will the world now stop, when world settlements are 
so pressing and so full of peril, and refuse or neglect to 
consider the dangers of gas in the possible wars that 
may come to shower their deadly perils upon us? The 
power to navigate the air and a gas so deadly that 
whole armies can be destro} T ed in an hour is the power 
that lies at the very threshold of the next war that shall 
come to destroy democracy and build up the power of 
autocracy in the world. Do not laugh this solemn fact 
to scorn, for such a thing is not only possible, but it is 
imminent. 

There is a remedy. That this great christian nation 
should stand in the way of the consummation of the 
means of crushing the blight of war and the possibility 
that the world may ever again be deluged by a catas- 
trophe such as we witnessed in the war just closed is 
unthinkable. 

For six thousand 3 r ears the world has been building 
and destroying, and in all that time it has not found 
time to consider the awful consequences of war and its 
cost in dollars and cents. 

Our civil war cost billions in money and treasure, but 
we are so prone to forget that we have not considered 
the penalties of war and its awful consequences in 
money and the awful struggles the nation must make to 
pay the debts that war must necessarily incur. 

The first cost of the civil struggle is a matter of 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 23 

record, but we have taken little account that for sixty 
years the labor of the nation has been taxed to pay the 
pensions of that war. This tax is today little less than 
it was fifty years ago. Then, again, only a few people 
are aware that we are still paying pensions of the Mex- 
ican war, and that war was fought nearly a century 
ago. And this is not yet all. We are still paying pen- 
sions of the war of 1812, fought more than a century 
ago. 

But the people are beginning to ask questions. They 
want to know where all the money goes that is annually 
paid in taxes for the support of the government. 

Dr. Kosa, chief physicist of the Bureau of Standards, 
from the unimpeachable records of the government, has 
undertaken to answer this question and his investiga- 
tions and answers give our annual budget a very queer 
look. 

In his first statement he says: "Out of every dollar 
we pay in taxes to the government, 92.8 per cent is 
spent to pay for past and future wars." Battleships, 
munitions, pensions, reconstruction, military schools. 
War ! War ! War ! The other 7.2 per cent pays for 
our Public Education, Reclamation, National Parks, 
Salaries, Agriculture, Mining, Public Health, and such 
demands as the boll weevil and hog cholera. 

Think of it. Ninety-two and eight-tenths per cent for 
destruction and only 7.2 per cent for constructive up- 
building. 

Must we answer further? We have talked only of 
dollars and the danger of the extermination of the 
human family. We have not taken into account the 
spirit of hate that war engenders. We have not gone 
with our boys into the trenches. We have not heard 
the boom of cannon. We have not recorded the loving 



2Jf BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

messages that our dying boys sent back to mothers, and 
wives, and sweethearts, nor have we stood by the bed- 
side of the starving women and children whose sons and 
husbands and fathers gave their lives in defense of their 
country. We have not heard the wails of the wounded 
and the dying on the slaughterfielcls of Europe. Think 
of all the horrors of war and then answer me, "Is war 
still to be the arbiter of disputes between the nations of 
the world?" Must we go on teaching our children the 
military strategy of war, instead of teaching them the 
philosophy of peace? 

Painter, paint a picture! Make it show what the 
world might have been had not the curse of war blighted 
it. Can't you paint it? Can't you paint a world with 
beautiful homes where peace and plenty and happiness 
reign? Can't you paint the roadsides parked with beau- 
tiful trees and flowers ? Painter, can't you paint a world 
without a single father or son who had been crippled by 
inhuman shot and shell? 

Christian America ! The first problem that must be 
solved before a real christian democracy can be estab- 
lished among men is the problem of crushing out of this 
nation and the world the spirit of militarism and the 
blight of war. 

War is a relic of the dark ages of strife, and ignor- 
ance, and selfishness, and greed, and lust of power. 
There is no place for war in the institutions of a chris- 
tian democracy. If there is no place for war in our 
institutions then there is no place or need for prepared- 
ness for war. 

If war is to be continued as the policy of this nation 
in the future, the fault is our own. We have the ballot, 
and it does not depend at this time entirely upon the 
votes of men. The ballot is in the hands of every woman 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 25 

in the land, and there is not a woman who is worthy the 
affection of a husband or the love of a child who would 
vote for a continuance of a policy of war in the world. 

Do the voters of this nation not know that we have 
built up a militarism and a spirit of autocracy that is 
intolerable in a free country? Think of a regular army 
of 280,000 men in this nation in a time of peace. Can 
any man tell us why this peace-loving nation would 
have need for such an army? Three thousand miles of 
water on our east and four thousand miles on our west, 
the Great Lakes and a peaceful nation on the north, 
where not even a garrison of soldiers has been charged 
with the duty of guarding the interests of either coun- 
try; on the south a friendly nation that would more 
quickly aid than combat us in the event of a threatened 
invasion from an enemy country. 

But this is not all that goes with the question of a 
military aristocracy. This army of 280,000 men is offi- 
cered by twenty-one major generals, 599 colonels, 2,200 
majors, and 4,440 captains. This army of officials is 
trained in the school of aristocratic militarism, and the 
retired list of the official head of the army must finally 
mean that the backs of the already overtaxed people 
will be bent with the burden of their support. 

This nation had reason to believe and hope for some 
arrangement for disarmament at the close of the world 
war that devastated Europe and cost this nation so 
many billions of dollars. 

Disarmament would be the symbol of a new hope. 
The whole world is sick unto death of armaments — be- 
cause the people know that armaments are certain fore- 
runners of war. 

The League of Nations made a specific provision for 
disarmament, but we, this great nation, halted, and in 



26 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

the halting we arouse a just suspicion in the mind of 
the world of our sincerity. 

Will anyone blame the nations who were our allies 
for halting in their program of disarmament in the face 
of our hesitation? 

Disarmament must come to all the nations at the same 
time, and with an arrangement that shall be just and 
equitable to all the countries alike. 

Will someone explain why this nation should refuse 
to disarm? Can anyone explain why we should appro- 
priate so many million dollars for warlike preparation 
if we are in good faith when we talk so entertaingly 
about the wisdom of disarmament? An appropriation 
in 1921 of $393,999,999 for the army and $433,999,000 
for the navy is too much if we expect our allies to be- 
lieve in our good faith. Think, then, of the discrepancy 
between the appropriations for the activities of war and 
peace. The total appropriations for war and for pen- 
sions — which is as truly war's demand — of $1,106,998,999 
and the appropriation for agriculture was only $31,- 
000,000. 

I am wondering whether the people know just what 
the item of pensions alone means to the country. I am 
also wondering whether the people know just what are 
our war's demands for pensions for the defenders of the 
nation. 

In 1920 there were on the pension roll o-f the United 
States 592,190 civil war veterans, 299,363 widows and 
885,110 invalids of the civil war. In the same year 
there were 149 pensioners of the war with Mexico, 
fought in 1848, and 2,423 widows. At the same time 
we were pajdng 71 pensions to widows of the war of 
1812, fought 109 years ago, and 30,422 veterans of the 
Spanish-American war. 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 21 

We make no complaint of the pensions, but refer to it 
simply to show how long a war lasts when we must face 
its after-effects in reconstruction and in pensions. 

When I made reference to our "military aristocracy" 
I did so advisedly. In more than one way it bears the 
earmarks of an aristocracy. Many people have never 
known that after spending a whole life in the service of 
his country, every army officer of high rank goes on the 
retired list with a princely salary, nor do they know 
that the same system attaches to the Supreme Court of 
the United States. 

Will someone explain why, after a lifetime of service 
at a princely salary, any retired officer should be carried 
on the payroll of the government at any salary at all? 

This is simply one of the relics of monarchial Europe 
which in the early days of this republic fastened itself 
upon the nation. No explanation has ever been given 
for the reason for this relic of the past being handed 
down to this late generation. If a good reason does not 
exist then it is high time the law was repealed and the 
practice abolished. 

War has carried with it so much waste; it has built 
up such a powerful force for self -perpetuation ; it has 
so long been tolerated because the people have not known 
the truth; its tendency toward aristocratic domination 
of social and political affairs has been so marked that 
the people have come to look upon the national army 
with somewhat of awe, instead of realizing that our 
army is simply an organized and drilled company of 
real Americans, who have no other rights than those 
enjoyed by every American citizen, and who are entitled 
to no more consideration. 

Militarism, and the very spirit of militarism, must be 
destroyed. An army for home protection is the most 



28 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

that should be tolerated. If it is true, as Dr. Mercher 
insists, that in the late war it took an average of 395 
shells to kill one man, this nation must either get some 
arrangement to prevent wars or find some cheaper 
method of killing men. Again, if it is true, as the 
actuaries of the great insurance companies have decided 
and fixed in their calculations, that an American boy's 
life is worth just forty-seven dollars, then this wilLseem 
to make the cost of taking that life out of all reason, 
high. 

Must we deal with these awful questions in a spirit of 
jest to make them impressive? Let the mothers of this 
nation know that the forty-seven dollars claimed by the 
actuaries as the price of an American boy's life is the 
value placed upon the babe she fondled with such pride, 
the boy whose education she secured with such sacrifice, 
and the man who went across the waters to fight the 
battles of his country. This is the same boy who gave 
his life for the ideals of our great democracy, and that 
boy was hers. 

War must be crushed. Militarism must go down. 
The people must arise and divorce every sentiment of 
political rights, and business privilege, and aristocratic 
cast, from the institutions of defense in this country, 
and it must be done without delay. Some arrangement 
must be speedily effected that will prevent future wars. 
Let no man listen to the argument so often advanced 
by men who use the little knowledge they possess in 
urging that because "we have always had war, we always 
will have war." Such a philosophy would forever close 
the doors of advancement and progress in the world. 
Wars can be prevented, and when this nation can speak 
directly upon the question, the politicians will be made 
to understand the meaning of their mandate. Whether 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 29 

such an arrangement shall be the covenant of the League 
of Nations, rejected by our senate in 1920, or some other 
arrangement that shall represent the creation of the 
ideals of the party that rejected the covenant of the 
League of Nations, the people little care, if that arrange- 
ment shall put the United States in a position of full 
and just partnership and responsibility with the other 
nations of the world, and bring an enduring world 
peace. Nothing less than this will reflect the wisdom 
and the patriotism of this nation, and nothing less than 
this will lay the foundation for an honorable and a last- 
ing peace. 

As these words are being written, the daily papers 
announce that the President has appointed representa- 
tives to sit in the council of the League of Nations, 
already organized, but that the authority of that repre- 
sentation is limited to questions that directly relate to 
American interests. Must proud America be humiliated 
before the world by putting itself in a position of un- 
conscionable selfishness? Must it be said of this great, 
progressive government that our interests in world peace 
stops where our selfish commercial interests begin? Is 
there a single question of reparation, or of industrial 
adjustments effecting Europe, that is not also a vital 
concern of this nation? Is this new policy to be one of 
the distinctly "American Policies" of this administra- 
tion? Is this nation in the future to sit back and use 
its influence and power in claiming where American 
interests are concerned, and then refuse its councils in 
the questions that disturb the peace of Europe, unless 
that disturbance shall threaten the commercial interests 
of America? Has this nation lived to so little purpose 
that it does not yet know that in the new world in which 
we live today no nation can live alone? Does the nation 



30 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

not yet realize that an enduring peace cannot precede 
justice? 

We have already paid an awful price to aid in crush- 
ing the autocracy of Germany, but the price of an en- 
during world peace is not yet paid. At this moment the 
world is facing another problem that far transcends in 
complexity and importance any question that the world 
war ever considered. We have yet to consider the in- 
tricate question of economic peace. Economic justice 
and economic peace. Who can measure the meaning of 
those terms? Is the world not yet aware that economic 
injustice and industrial supremacy will be written by 
future historians as the underlying first cause of every 
physical conflict of the world, and the strife in the world 
will never be settled, and the peace of the world will 
never be assured, until economic justice has been estab- 
lished between the nations of the earth? 

If America insists on standing alone, it must make up 
its mind to be content with a policy of isolation com- 
mercially and industrially. You may build a wall 
around America so high that it will exclude every 
product of the balance of the world, but when you do 
this you must be reminded that the same wall that will 
keep the products of other lands out of America will be 
just as effective to keep our own products in. Trade 
must be reciprocal. This great nation cannot live alone. 
At the close of the war we enjoyed a splendid oppor- 
tunity for the extension of our commerce into the dark 
places of the world, but we can never reap the harvest 
that those opportunities offered unless we extend the 
olive branch of industrial peace to those who, for the 
moment, are struggling in the agonies of an industrial 
upheaval and economic ruin. 

America is a great nation. Its economic greatness has 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 31 

given it an enviable place among the nations of the 
earth as a result of the war. We fought for an ideal, 
and not for industrial advantage. With our help the 
victory was nobly won, but after it was so nobly won, 
and after we had received the plaudits of mankind, 
after we had helped to fix in the terms of the armistice 
an agreement for the establishment of an enduring 
world peace, after our President had given to the peace 
councils his presence, and his great wisdom, we halted, 
and in the bitterest contention that ever disgraced our 
country, we refused to ratify the treaty that had been 
made with such patriotic devotion to the greatest cause 
that ever engrossed the mind of the world since the be- 
ginning of time. 

World peace was the ideal of our boys. It was the 
ideal of the 10,000,000 mothers who made the greatest 
offering that was ever made in all history. 

Who was responsible for the defeat of that treaty and 
the achievement of our ideals? I want to answer this 
question, for its answer may open the way through which 
we may even yet wash our hands of this greatest crime 
that was ever committed against the world, and against 
our boys who gave their lives for that great ideal. 

Were the people of America directly responsible for 
that crime? With vehemence and in a spirit of patriot- 
ism, I resent such an imputation. America stands be- 
fore the world as a peaceful nation. It was for the 
ratification of the treaty of Versailles, but when the 
critical moment arrived it could not speak. It still 
stands for world peace, and it is trembling at this mo- 
ment because it well knows that in an attempt to effect the 
organization of an American association of nations for 
the prevention of future wars, it will be next to impos- 
sible in the face of the already completed organization 



32 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

of the League of Nations with a membership encom- 
passing nearly the entire world. 

Listen, fellow Americans! The League of Nations 
failed of ratification because of the spirit and the power 
of a political machine that longed for a place at the 
nation's pie counter. It was the uncurbed spirit and 
power of an aristocracy of militarism and commercial- 
ism that for half a century has enjoyed more power for 
evil than such an organization should ever enjoy in a 
republic of freemen, and last of all, it was the spirit of 
selfishness that excused the people of this so-called chris- 
tian nation to seize the golden opportunity to gather 
into its already bulging coffers the ill-gotten gain of 
world exploitation. The industrial exploitation we have 
commonly denominated "profiteering" in our own coun- 
try, through its power to fix prices, has revealed a spirit 
of ungodliness that has no parallel in human history. 
Can any man rightly measure that power? It owns our 
railroads, our mines, our factories, as well as every other 
source of production and distribution. It owns every- 
thing but the labor to run its machines. And to this 
labor it has never paid more than enough for a scant 
living. Let the world know that it was the spirit and 
the power of "government by party" in this nation that 
thwarted the only real attempt the world has ever made 
for the establishment of a workable world peace when 
it refused to ratify the treaty of Versailles and the 
League of Nations covenant. 

If that infamous thing we call "government by party" 
had never committed another offense for which it de- 
served to be destroyed, that offense would be sufficient 
justification. It was an insult to every man who served 
in our splendid army, and so nobly aided in bringing 
the great war to a successful close. It was an insult to 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 33 

every mother who offered her boy on the nation's altar 
with a promise that this should be a war to end wars. 
It was an insult to our President, who so nobly repre- 
sented American ideals in the old world, and brought 
those nations into such a splendid relation of friendli- 
ness that they burned candles in honor of our stars and 
stripes, and were willing and glad to subscribe to a pro- 
gram of world peace. 

Christian America ! Hide your face in shame ! The 
ideals of a world peace were your ideals. It was your 
child. In the name of "government by party" you 
strangled it after it was born. You did it in spite of 
the prayers of the christian people of this nation. This 
proud nation of freemen who owe so much to the guid- 
ance of the God of Heaven in its trying days at Valley 
Forge and in the darkest days of the rebellion, stands 
today before the world as a nation of slackers. 

Is there a single man in this country who believes 
that the forty-nine nations that at this time constitute 
the League of Nations can be persuaded to abandon that 
world organization and begin a new attempt to allign 
the world around some other arrangement than the 
treaty of Versailles? The people of America could not 
speak. We have no machinery through which this na- 
tion's will can be made known to its law-makers, but 
under a christian democracy such as we contemplate we 
would have commanded our law-makers within thirty 
days that the great patriotic heart of this nation stood 
for the redemption of every pledge that we had made to 
our boys, and to the world, and it would have said that 
the treaty presented by our President must be ratified, 
and then if it needed amendment, as it might, it could 
be done later. 

Refusal to ratify the Versailles Treaty and the League 



S4 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

of Nations cost the farmers of this nation more than 
$6,000,000,000 in the price of foodstuffs alone, and it cost 
many times that amount in the unconscionable profiteer- 
ing that its failure made possible. While this nation 
was paying the penalty in dollars, the starving millions 
of Europe were paying the penalty in precious lives. 

War is still a menace to the peace of the world. The 
spirit of militarism is not yet dead. The world war 
brought to the whole world a new vision and a new 
hope. That vision, and that hope, have been sacrificed 
upon the altar of political spoils. 

The disarmament conference inspires little hope. Suc- 
cess in that conference cannot bind the world because 
only a few nations will sit in its councils. Is someone 
saying that all the powerful nations will be there, and 
that they will, after all, rule the world? If this is 
true — and it may be true — then we are to begin again 
just where we began two thousand years ago. The 
League of Nations now in effect gives promise to the 
small as well as to the great nations of the world, and 
their voice in the councils at least gives promise to them 
of an honorable hearing on every question that effects 
their welfare. 

Is there a single man in America who will dispute 
that this nation's ideal when it entered the world war 
was the ideal of enduring peace? If there is still doubt 
upon this point, let the doubter read the following copy 
of a letter that was written by a fond mother who had 
come to the recruiting station to offer her boy upon the 
nation's altar. Here is what she said : 
To My Government: 

I come to you today in the name of the ten million 
mothers who have been asked by the mandate of the 
law to offer their sons as human sacrifices upon the altar 



THE BLIGHT OF WAR 35 

of this nation, to pay the penalty of the sins of men. 
No matter how willingly those mothers shall make that 
great sacrifice, every one of them down deep in her 
mother-heart will say that war is a crime against the 
man who must stand before the enemy guns; it is a 
crime against the mother who bore him, and it is a 
crime against his country to be asked to offer to the 
slaughter fields of war the brightest of America's young 
manhood. 

To these mothers who are asked or commanded to 
make this sacrifice this nation must make answer, and 
that answer must point out a reason that shall appeal to 
the christian conscience and the patriotism of the 
mothers who are asked to offer their boys upon the 
nation's altar. 

We have been told that conscription relates only to 
men. Can this be possible? Does not our government 
know that war's necessities are not alone men behind 
the guns ? Have we not learned that we must have guns 
as well as men behind them? Ask the mothers of 
Europe. They will tell you that in war the nation must 
have money to buy arms and food and clothing for the 
men. If this is true, will you still tell us that conscrip- 
tion relates only to men? 

I want to ask: Are the rich men of the nation doing 
their part in the prosecution of the war? Oh, you say, 
that they have responded freely by buying Liberty 
Bonds. 

Listen to the mothers of the boys ! If a rich man laid 
a million dollars upon the nation's altar as a gift, and a 
mother placed upon that same altar her precious son, 
which has made the greater offering to the nation? 

Then they tell us that this is a war to maintain the 
rights of democracy in the world. Suppose we win, will 



36 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

the world democracy we make safe give promise of a 
world peace? A world peace is a lofty ideal, but the 
mothers of this land want to know when they make the 
human offering whether that offering is made with a 
promise that when the war is won it will bring to the 
world a realization of a world peace. 

The mothers of this land will ask and demand that 
the first question to be settled at the green table after 
the war is over, shall be the question of an enduring 
world peace. A world democracy is not enough. Our 
boys, to fight their best, must have a higher ideal, and 
that ideal must be an enduring peace. 

As we bring our boys to you today, it is with the un- 
derstanding that they are to fight for a world peace, 
and that understanding is registered in High Heaven. 

Oh, my fellow countrymen ! The realization of this 
ideal will cost much blood and treasure, but, be it the 
precious blood of our sons or the treasure that is repre- 
sented by money, it will all be worse than lost unless it 
shall bring to the world an enduring peace for all the 
world alike. 

It is with this understanding and with this promise 
that we bring our boys to you today, and that promise 
must be redeemed to our boys and to their mothers. 



A WORLD PEACE 37 

Chapter IV 

A WORLD PEACE 

When idealistic America hearkened to the call, "Come 
over in Europe and help us," we knew the dangers that 
threatened the world. For nearly two years the unequal 
struggle had been going on. It was a struggle between 
the greatest military autocracy that ever disgraced the 
world and the spirit of democracy. The old world never 
before realized what Prussianism meant to them. That 
Prussianism had no vision, but for the future dominance 
not of Europe alone, but of the world. 

This nation responded to that call with a burning 
hope that the coming victory — which was certain when 
we entered the war — would bring the opportunity, and 
open the way, for a permanent peace. What a vision! 
What an opportunity! What an argument the great 
calamity would offer for some arrangement for a perma- 
nent peace! From the day we entered the great strug- 
gle the eyes of the whole world turned toward America. 
As the war progressed the pen of our President, with a 
splendid idealism, and the dashing bravery of our 
American soldiers, shattered the sword of Prussianism, 
and the peasants of all Europe burned candles in honor 
of our Stars and Stripes. Those burning words and 
lofty ideals captured the conscience of the world, and 
the new doctrine of equal rights of small, as well as 
great, nations was propounded for the first time in all 
history. 

Does anyone wonder that the great common people of 
Europe saw a new vision and had a new hope? Is there 
a single American whose heart did not swell with pride 



38 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

when he read the stories of those oppressed peoples 
burning candles in honor of their liberators? "Equal 
rights of all nations, great and small." Will anyone 
think that little Belgium, the doormat of Europe, would 
not understand and rejoice for this protection? Surely 
you think that this was a cause for rejoicing, but what 
was the promise ? We told our boys that this was a war 
to end wars. We promised them that when peace was 
declared the terms of that peace must provide for the 
permanent peace of the world. The last of the fourteen 
points upon which the armistice was based was a prom- 
ise for a League of Nations assuring the permanent 
peace of the world. That promise was signed by every 
belligerent in the war. Its formation into a workable 
compact, and the shaping of a world sentiment willing 
to sacrifice individual rights for the common good, and 
for the great settlements contemplated in that compact, 
was the greatest diplomatic undertaking the world has 
ever winessed. 

In my mind, I am standing on one of the great bat- 
tlefields of France. I can see, row upon row, of crosses 
that mark the last resting place of our gallant boys who 
gave their lives for that great ideal, World Peace. 
Among the crosses millions of poppies in full bloom 
shed their splendid beauty upon the scene. A man stood 
among those crosses with bent form, and in his face the 
evidence of a weight of sorrow. I heard a voice that 
seemed to come with a measured accent and sadness as 
he said, 

"We are the dead. 
Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset's glow. 
Loved and were loved, but now we lie in Flanders' 
Field." 



A WORLD PEACE 89 

His head poised, and his face was turned toward 
America as he continued, 

"To you from failing hands we throw the torch. 
Be yours to lift it high. 
If ye break faith with us who die, 

We shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders' 
Field." 

Americans ! Did we lift the torch high ? Did we re- 
deem the promise we made our boys and the world? 
Three years have passed since the armistice was signed, 
and we are still at war with Germany. We have wit- 
nessed the most vitriolic political fight that ever dis- 
graced any nation on earth. Our senate refused to ratify 
the League of Nations covenant and the treaty with the 
central powers that was created with so much sacrifice 
and so much hope. By that refusal we, as a nation, 
must assume the responsibility and the chagrin of de- 
feating the first real attempt that was ever made to 
secure the peace of the world. While we halted the 
whole world trembled between economic ruin and bol- 
shevism. The unrest of the whole world argued for 
ratification of the treaty. The churches prayed for it. 
The starving millions of Europe plead for ratification 
before High Heaven, while they saw their women and 
children dying before their helplessness, but we refused. 

Our failure to ratify the treaty of Versailles, and the 
profiteering made possible through that failure, shocked 
the conscience of the entire world, and it lost to this 
great-hearted nation of patriots that splendid position 
we had so nobly earned as we fought in the trenches 
and by their sides in the great struggle. "Rome fiddled 
while the world starved." This cruel political mistake 
cost the farmers of this nation more than six billion 



40 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

dollars in the price of their crops alone; it brought no 
relief to the consumers, and it branded this nation as a 
nation that will not redeem its promises. 

The promised peace has come as best it might through 
the agencies of the forty-nine nations of the world who 
had seen the sword of Prussianism shattered, and 
through whose awakened conscience they were ready to 
crush the possibility of another war. They knew the 
horrors of war first hand, and so earnest were they to 
have their war pledges fulfilled that they did not wait 
for this nation, but completed the organization of the 
league as contemplated. 

That the reader may get a complete and an official 
understanding of the beginnings of the "League of Na- 
tions," we quote from a pamphlet entitled, "Three 
Months of the League of Nations," published by the 
"World Peace Foundation," Boston: 

"The League of Nations is a reality. Modestly and 
democratically it began to function this morning at 
ten-thirty o'clock, when the council opened its first meet- 
ing in the clock room of the French Foreign Ministry. 

"Nine men gathered about a green-covered table in 
one end of the salon of crimson and gold and put in 
motion the machinery of the most ambitious experiment 
in government man has ever essayed, while a hundred 
or more diplomats from the four corners of the earth 
looked on. 

"The sunlight, which heaven sent to bless the day, 
shone through the windows overlooking the Seine, and 
the sunlight threw a shadow across the green-covered 
table, the shadow of a vacant chair. All who were there 
saw the shadow and remarked that the chair was empty 
and regretted it, and all agreed to keep the chair wait- 
ing until America should come to fill it." 



A WORLD PEACE U 

The shadow of the empty chair grew bolder in outline 
when Leon Bourgeois in his speech said: 

" 'Today, gentlemen, we are holding the first meeting 
of the council convened by the President of the United 
States. The task of inaugurating this great international 
institution, which opens so wide a field for humanity, 
should have fallen to President Wilson. We regret the 
reasons which still delay the final decision of our friends 
in Washington, but we may express the hope that these 
last difficulties will soon be overcome and that a repre- 
sentative of the Great American Republic will occupy 
the place which awaits it among us. The work of the 
council will then assume that definite character and that 
peculiar force which should be associated with it. 5 

"Lord Curzon, speaking for the British Empire, con- 
cluded his address with an appeal for American par- 
ticipation in the League. He said, 'While I am in 
agreement with all M. Bourgeois has said, I should wish 
especially to express my full concurrence as regards the 
United States of America. The decision must be her 
own, but if, and when the United States elects to take 
her place in the new council chamber of the nations, the 
place is vacant, and the warmest welcome will be hers.' " 

This modest beginning of the League of Nations, 
which included all our allies in the war, seems modest 
indeed when we realize that at this time forty-nine na- 
tions of the earth have joined the League, and more are 
ready, but are waiting for specific remedies of disquali- 
fication. 

The chair in the council chamber of the League of 
Nations is still vacant. America still halts. The eyes of 
the world are still on America. The world stood in as 
great need of the councils of this nation since the sign- 
ing of the armistice as it did when they cried out to us, 



42 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

"Come over into Europe and help us." They had a 
right to expect the leadership of America in the solution 
of the complex problems of the world organization. To 
withhold it and to refuse to ratify the treaty and the 
League of Nations was the greatest political crime that 
was ever commited in the name of civilized diplomacy. 

Do you remember the story of the king who, with his 
wives and the elect of his court, were reveling in the 
luxuries of autocratic extravagance? And do you re- 
member that in the midst of that revelry a human hand, 
without a body, appeared writing upon the wall? The 
king was frightened. He howled for help. The queen 
could not comfort him. The company dispersed, and in 
their homes they locked the doors and hid under the 
beds, but it was too late. 

They did not know what the writing meant. The 
king called that gallant young lion-tamer and prophet, 
and he told them what it meant. One of the words of 
the writing was "Tekel," and the message meant, "Thou 
art weighed in the balance and found wanting." 

America! Be not deceived! Yours was a wonderful 
mission. It was full of promise, but it was also full of 
responsibility. You have not measured up to your re- 
sponsibilities, and you have failed to keep your prom- 
ises. You promised our boys and you promised the 
world. It was done in the open and the world thought 
it was done in good faith. The world has been waiting 
so long for the solution of the problem of war that it 
has become discouraged. America was in a splendid 
position to aid. It had given first aid, but the world 
needed more. American thought and American life are 
afire with a portentous unrest. These fires are internal. 
They are red hot. They cannot be quenched until the 
dregs of unrighteousness are burned out. The very 



A WORLD PEACE JfS 

foundations of our civilization are imperilled, and we 
are crying to God for help. The world is sick with a 
sickness that is not entirely the result of war. Wealth 
has been wasted faster than it has been created. The 
waste of human life by bombs, and gas, and bullets was 
stopped with the signing of the armistice, but the waste 
of life by starvation, and the waste of wealth by profi- 
teering and exploitation still goes on unchallenged. 
Bankruptcy is staring the smaller nations in the very 
face, and bolshevism in its varied forms stalks broad- 
cast throughout the world. While most of the man 
power of the world seems worse than lost, our states- 
men and financiers prattle about reconstruction. The 
war was fought to crush militarism and end wars, but 
the nations — and our own nation as well — are still build- 
ing navies in the name of peace and exploiting the world 
in the name of civilization. 

It will not do to say that America has spoken upon 
the question of war or upon its endorsement of the 
League of Nations. The Christian conscience of this 
great nation is against the horrors of war, and it would 
so record its verdict with an almost unanimous vote if 
the question were submitted to the people without the 
entanglements of partisan prejudice. Talk about re- 
construction while we are still in the state of war, and 
while we are spending more for an army and a navy 
than we spent while the war was on, is worse than futile. 
Talk about disarmament while this great and powerful 
nation is holding aloof from the League of Nations to 
put an end to future wars is the sheerest folly. We must 
have an enduring peace. Enduring peace simply fulfills 
the promise of the Christ, and to continue a policy of 
militarism and armaments and war is to invite, if not to 
force, the utter collapse of our civilization. 



U BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

When war and the war spirit are crushed, when dis- 
armament is made general and effective, when the world 
has given itself wholly to the philosophy of peace, then 
we can turn our faces toward a glorious future, and say 
to our boys who are sleeping today in Flander's Fields: 

"Sleep on, brave boys, America was true, 
We have redeemed the pledge we made to all the world 

and you. 
We lifted high the torch you threw from failing hands, 
Its light brought peace to all the world, and joy shall 

reign, 
While you shall sweetly sleep in Flander's Field." 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 4-5 

Chapter V 

THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 

As early as the Fourteenth century the last enemy of 
man was represented by the use of simple images to 
illustrate the universal power of death. Sometimes these 
images represented the husbandmen watering the ground 
with blood, or planting it with swords, or rooting out 
weeds, or plucking up flowers, or sowing the ground 
with corpses. Not infrequently they were represented 
by monarchs assembling their armies, and inviting them 
to festivals, or citing them to judgment. This was "The 
Dance of Death." For centuries the dance of death in 
some form or another Was the national expression of a 
universal cry of despair. 

In these days when the world is grappling with after- 
war problems of reconstruction; when the faith of the 
world is shaken almost into a positive disbelief in men 
and governments ; when nearly every government of 
earth is on the verge of anarchy and bolshevism, is it 
any wonder that the people of America are crying out 
for a leader, not to lead them in a dance of death, but 
to lead them into a new hope for the future before it is 
too late? 

Thinking men of the world are beginning to wonder 
when all this chaos and unrest will end. 

The most monumental blunder of all time was the 
commission of that crime that brought on the world war. 
From the day it was committed until the armistice was 
signed, and even to the present time, the results of that 
crime became more monumental. 

Long before we entered the war our munitions manu- 



46 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

facturers were profiteering off the misfortunes of the 
already war-torn countries of Europe. 

While the people of America were eating war bread 
to save food for our allies, the profiteers were laying the 
foundation of great fortunes. While our boys were 
dying on the battlefields of Europe, their mothers and 
sisters and sweethearts were at home providing bandages 
to bind up the wounds they knew were certain, and their 
fathers were furnishing food to supply their strength to 
fight. When they returned to their homes, then they 
learned that while they had been across the waters fight- 
ing for the ideals of a world democracy at a dollar a 
day, the men who stayed at home, the profiteers, 
had made certain their future fortunes over the dead 
bodies of their fallen heroes. They had not thought of 
the sacrifices that were being made for them on the 
other side of the waters. Their ideals were not the 
ideals of a world democracy. They had never heard 
that appeal of Colonel McCrae when he stood among 
the poppies in Flanders' Field, and looking anxiously 
out toward America, said: 

"To you from failing hands we throw the torch. 
Be yours to lift it high. 
If ye break faith with us who die, 
We shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders' 
Fields." 

When the war was over, the world had a right to 
hope for a serious attempt at reconstruction, but instead, 
it seemed that the whole world had gone mad. Profi- 
teering was running rampant in every industrial activ- 
ity. Nowhere in history can be found a period so por- 
tentous as the period through which we are at this time 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 47 

passing. The people are clamoring for readjustments, 
for new alignments, for new laws, and for new condi- 
tions. All these are the righteous demands of a new- 
born world. 

The war has brought to the American mind an indus- 
trial condition that has no precedent in the memory of 
man. We have been thinking in terms of billions instead 
of millions. We have been demanding more money for 
public boards, we have multiplied the activities of gov- 
ernment by additions to the army of public employes; 
we have swelled the flood of public bonds; we have 
doubled public salaries; and to pay for all these added 
burdens we have suddenly awakened to the fact that 
bonds and salaries must be paid in taxes, and this must 
mean increased taxation. 

Federal taxes have increased eight times since 1913, 
only eight years ago. State taxes in Nebraska are seven 
times as great as they were in 1917, four years ago, and 
in every state in the Union the same condition exists. 

The total burden of public indebtedness has increased 
in eight years from $50 per capita to more than $300 
for every man, woman and child in the country. 

There is no corresponding increase in wealth or in 
population. In Nebraska, during the last fourteen years, 
state taxes have increased over five hundred per cent, 
while the valuation of the property has risen only eighty- 
one per cent, and the gain in population has been almost 
negligible by comparison. 

What has occurred in Nebraska has occurred in every 
state in the Union, and the people everyAvhere are groan- 
ing under the burden that their taxes impose. 

They tell us that the war is over, but our congress is 
at this time appropriating more money for the army, the 



JfS BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

navy and for pensions than was appropriated when all 
the world was in the grip of the most frightful war in 
all history. Yes, today, when we are at peace with the 
whole world, we have appropriated more money for war 
than any nation on earth ever dreamed of appropriating 
or spending on preparation for war prior to 1914. 

Is this peace loving nation to lead the world to suicide 
by taxation? Are we to stand before the world in time 
of peace as a more menacing militarism than Germany 
ever was? 

But it is not only for militarism that we are being so 
unmercifully taxed. Legislatures have run wild. Cities 
have followed the example, and from the school district 
to the government, the nation is being taxed to the limit. 
We are destroying gOA^ernment lyy taxation. We are 
confiscating the homes of the people. They are clamor- 
ing for relief. They are crying out that the nation is 
in more danger from the taxing power in the hands of 
the government's public servants than it ever was from 
any foreign invader. 

The relief from the burdens for which the people 
clamor must be found in some fundamental solution to 
the whole problem of revenue. I will not need to tell 
the people that from the ver}^ earliest government the 
problem of revenue has been one of the most perplexing 
problems with which we have been obliged to grapple, 
and that at no time in our history has the problem been 
more perplexing and more menacing than it is at this 
moment. 

In our title we have asked the question, "What's the 
matter with our Uncle Sam?" and our answer to this 
question would be incomplete if we failed to discuss in a 
somewhat extended manner the whole problem of 
revenue. 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 49 

To this task we devote ourselves with many misgiv- 
ings, for we well know that upon the question of reve- 
nue and taxation there has ever been a well-defined dif- 
ference of opinion. 

Nothing is more fundamental than the underlying 
first principles of taxation. In the abstract, the princi- 
ples are simple, but when we come to make the applica- 
tion of those principles to the concrete problems that 
must be solved, we find the minds of the people at vari- 
ance. 

Taxation is simply the price every man must pay for 
the protection of government. Protection of government, 
and support of that government by the payment of taxes, 
is as sacred a contract between the citizen and his gov- 
ernment as though it were signed and acknowledged be- 
fore a court. The taxing power of the government has 
never been disputed, but the manner of levying the tax 
and the application of the tax burdens to all citizens 
alike has been the subject of much contention. 

The people have never been convinced that equality 
of taxation has ever existed, or that it exists at this 
time. Whether this feeling of inequality of taxation is 
grounded in fact is a question that must be set at rest. 
The complaints have been bitter. The charge of tax- 
dodging is as old as the world. Some classes of prop- 
erty are ever in the plain sight of the assessor, while 
other properties are easily hidden from his view. 

It will not do to say that every tax schedule has an 
oath appended, and a sacred oath is a sufficient safe- 
guard. There was a time perhaps in our history when 
a sacred oath was held more binding than it is today. 
Today the oath is little protection when men set out to 
defeat the operation of a law that is so necessary even 
as the laws of revenue and taxation. 



50 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

But we want to record that there is a very general 
spirit of fairness yet among the people, and a willing- 
ness to pay a full share of the tax for the support of 
government, if every citizen can be made to do the same. 

Are the complaints that we hear on every hand of tax- 
dodging among the people well grounded? Is there 
serious tax-dodging among the people? These are the 
questions that must be answered in this discussion, for 
these are the things that must be set at rest before any 
just settlement of the question is to be realized. 

The discussion of this question must be made from the 
standpoint of the state as a unit, because from the state 
alone can be had records that are valuable in ascertain- 
ing the exact facts upon which an opinion can be based. 
These facts as they relate to Nebraska are no doubt sub- 
stantially the same as they will be found in every state 
in the Union. 

It must be admitted at the outset that a perfectly cor- 
rect statement cannot be had as to the amounts of as- 
sessed value in urban and rural districts, because in so 
many cases there is in the reports of the auditor an 
overlapping that must render the reports subject to some 
uncertainty. In the following tables the assessment in 
Nebraska for 1920 is shown as to the lands and their 
improvements, as well as the stock and grain, to belong 
to the rural districts or to the farmers, while the urban 
properties are shown in a separate table. In each case 
we have allowed for any overlapping so that each table 
will show with as much accuracy as is possible the exact 
amount of the state taxes paid by each class. 

The following table is for the rural assessments item- 
ized as they are itemized by the State Auditor, and the 
values given are the values upon which the levy was 
made rather than the actual value for which the prop- 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 51 

erty was assessed, which is live times the amount of the 
assessed value: 

Table of Eural Assessments, Nebraska, 1920 

Improved lands $ 334,039,165 

Unimproved lands 80,369,878 

Improvements on lands. . . 31,939,868 

Cattle 30,017,588 

Horses 11,774,775 

Hogs 5,789,598 

Poultry : 1,386,442 

Sheep " 401,973 

Wheat 1,688,442 

Corn 5,662,878 

Oats 891,333 

Alfalfa Hay 452,118 

Pop Corn 31,857 

Kaffir Corn 31,192 

Barley 40,732 

Speltz 5,042 

Alfalfa Clover Seed 25,103 

Potatoes 29,478 

Hay and Alfalfa 439,983 

Broom Corn 25,117 

Farm Implements 9,795,585 

Two-thirds of Automobiles 8,552,144 

Total Nursery Stock 13,913 

Improvements on State Lands 1,647,954 

Bees 29,725 

One-half of All Household 5,553,976 

One-third of Nebraska Corporations 1,089,744 

One-half Telephone Companies 2,504,716 

One-half All Credits, Money Loaned 5,239,409 

One-half All Money on Hand 11,237,674 



52 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Table of Urban Assessments, 1920 

One-half All Household $ 5,553,976 

All Goods and Merchandise 19,819,170 

All Typewriting Machines 179,482 

Cash Kegisters 106,096 

All Stocks in Corporations 307,096 

All Franchises of Any Description 271,360 

All Other Property 2,388,169 

Stock in National Banks 4,243,331 

Stock in State Banks. ... , 4,625,600 

Public Utility Corporations 4,290,052 

Foreign Inc. Companies 82,227 

Accident and Fire Insurance Companies.. 1,252,495 

Foreign Insurance Companies 1,007,224 

Express Companies 132,353 

Telegraph Companies 248,820 

Pipe Lines 145,820 

Two-thirds Nebraska Corporations 2,179,488 

One-half Telephone Companies 2,504,716 

Office and Furnace Fixtures 1,666,360 

Property of Kailroads 60,851,325 

Billiard and Pool Tables 74,081 

One-third Automobiles 5,135,073 

Town Lots and Improvements 111,302,858 

One-half of Credits, Money Loaned 5,239,409 

One-half Money in Banks and Trust Com- 
panies 11,327,674 

Moving Picture Shows 51,181 

Tax Sales 173,691 

Fire and Burglar Proof Safes 77,777 

Money Paid to Building and Loan Ass'ns. 756,066 

Book Accounts Due 1,947,800 

Stock in Elevators 791,414 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 55 

It must be understood that in making the comparisons 
between the property assessed as urban and rural, it is 
not done in this manner with the intention of awaken- 
ing prejudice, but it is done in this manner simply to 
establish facts upon which a basis may be found for 
some final adjustment that will remove any cause for 
complaint. 

The revenue problem is one of the complex problems 
of the world. The middle classes insist that the rich 
hide their property from the assessor, and in so doing 
they, in effect, refuse to bear their full share of the bur- 
den of government. The farmers insist that the com- 
mercial classes are in a position to pass the taxes on to 
the consumers, to those who must patronize them in one 
way or another in the processes of distribution. Eight 
or wrong, the causes for complaint must be removed. 
Some remedy must be found that will set at rest even a 
suspicion that every citizen who enjoys the protection of 
government does not bear his full share of the tax that 
goes to the support of the government. 

But the question at issue at this time is, "Are the sus- 
picions entertained by the people well grounded?" Is it 
true that the commercial interests of the state and the 
nation are either passing their tax on to the other fel- 
lows, or dodging the tax entirely by refusing to assess 
the property, and if so, can a remedy for this be found? 

These questions must be answered, and if the com- 
plaints are found to be true, then a remedy must be 
promptly applied. 

The reports of the Auditor of State furnish the only 
means of getting at the bottom facts as they relate to 
the amounts the several classes pay toward the support 
of the government. This biennial report is a silent wit- 
ness to these facts that will not be disputed. 



54 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Analysis of these returns is another matter. Such an 
analysis as will reflect the exact truth is rendered most 
difficult because in some instances the overlapping values 
in rural and urban districts are not easily adjusted so as 
to be certain of their perfect correctness. It will be 
seen that no man can tell with perfect accuracy just 
what per cent of the automobiles, household goods, 
corporation stock, telephone stock, money in banks, 
stocks in banks, and other classifications of the property, 
belongs to the rural and how much belongs to the urban 
classes. 

Because of this overlapping and consequent uncer- 
tainty we have made our divisions of these values after 
making inquiry of well-informed and impartial citizens, 
who have had the best opportunity to know, and we be- 
lieve they will be found substantially correct. But 
where there has been the greatest uncertainty we have in 
every instance given the urban class the benefit of the 
doubt by favoring that side of the ledger balance in the 
estimate. 

From the table on rural values we find that the value 
of all properties belonging to the farms and distinctly 
owned by the rural classes were assessed in 1920 at 
$551,141,375, and that the urban properties were re- 
turned at the value of $211,143,536, while the grand 
total assessed value of the State of Nebraska for the 
same year was $762,284,909. 

These tables reveal a very startling condition. While 
the real estate mortgages of the entire state amount to 
more than $400,000,000 and the chattel mortgages to 
more than $141,426,200, the property of the entire state 
is assessed at only $762,284,909, and of this amount the 
rural assessment or the farm property is assessed at 
$551,141,373. 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 55 

This calls to mind one of the marked tendencies of 
our modern civilization. It is the fixed determination of 
certain classes of business interests to shift the burdens 
of government. Only a few years ago a demand was 
made for the passage of a law exempting real estate 
mortgages from taxation under a contract that the 
mortgagor would pa}^ the entire tax on the land covered 
by the mortgage. Under the argument that such a law 
would relieve the unfair double taxation that had vexed 
the law-makers so long, and at the same time furnish a 
favored investment for the local funds of the people the 
law was passed. So satisfying was this special privilege 
that in only a short time the people seeking exemption 
in that manner realized the complete exemption of all 
real esate mortgages within the state. 

While under the old law only a small per cent of the 
real estate mortgages in the state found their way to the 
assessors' books, at this time the state and the nation 
alike have awakened to the unpleasant fact that in the 
state we have surrendered the right to tax more than 
$400,000,000 of real estate mortgage, and so popular has 
this special privilege come to be that the last census 
discloses that in the United States real estate mortgage 
exemptions total more than $27,000,000,000. This simply 
means that at the suggestion, or on the demand of the 
money lending classes of the nation, the entire burden of 
taxation represented by this vast accumulation of wealth 
was, without agitation and without a struggle, unloaded 
upon the already tax-burdened people who must go out 
into the fields and produce the things that must go to 
the very existence of every man, woman and child of 
the nation. 

Was it right to stamp this as a "tendency of our mod- 
ern civilization? Is it right to classify morta'aavs as 



5€ BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

property? Do not the owners of these preferred tax 
exempted properties appeal to the government-supported 
courts for protection many times, while the owners of 
our farms would never find an occasion to ask for pro- 
tection once? 

Exemption of property from taxation is nothing less 
than a special privilege. It is based on no principle of 
right, and it is nothing less than a desire to reap where 
others have sown. The law must be repealed, and a law 
must be enacted that will secure to the people that the 
burden of taxation will be shared alike by every owner 
of property that may demand the protection of govern- 
ment. 

I cannot refrain from calling attention in this con- 
nection to another law granting a special privilege in 
Nebraska and no doubt in other states. Everybody un- 
derstands how the laws have protected the people from 
unjust interest rates by the passage of our usury laws. 
Under these laws the legal rate of interest in Nebraska 
is 7 per cent and the contract rate is 10 per ecnt, while 
the taking of more than 10 per cent renders the con- 
tract for the payment of interest null and void, and not 
collectible. These laws were made to protect the busi- 
ness interests of the country from the rapacity of greedy 
money lenders, but for half a century little account has 
been taken of that class of people who have no credit at 
the bank, and could not borrow a cent of money in an 
emergency. No man with a family under the best eco- 
nomic conditions can be free from the necessity of bor- 
rowing money. That necessity may be sickness, or 
death, or the loss of a job, but every such case is a real 
signal of distress. 

There is not a city in the land in which a cry of dis- 
tress has not revealed a story of extortion by loan sharks 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 57 

who disgraced and disregarded the law and charged 
every penny of interest that the necessities of the dis- 
tress would consent to pay. 

The loan shark has disgraced every city of America. 
He has fattened upon the distress of helpless widows 
and unfortunate poor. He has plied his illegal traffic 
in spite of the laws that protect the well-to-do. So 
necessary has become the demand for money from those 
who cannot borrow at the bank, and so clamorous have 
become those who wanted to fatten on the distress of 
those who faced starvation that an appeal was made in 
Nebraska only six years ago for the passage of a special 
law for the regulation of the "loan shark." This was an- 
other appeal for special legislation, and this appeal also 
was heeded. This appeal was made in the name of the 
distressed poor who w T ere not able to borrow in the 
regular way, but the poor were never heard as to the 
necessity of such legislation. They were never asked. 
The special legislation was not asked for their benefit, 
for no man and no legitimate business can pay a rate 
above 10 per cent for money and live. This so-called 
"Loan Shark Law" provides for licensing men to take 
usury, and gives them the sanction and protection of 
the laws of Nebraska. 

A special law and a special privilege for whom? 
Was this law passed for the protection of the thousands 
of men and women in Nebraska who in their distress 
must either pay the demands of the usurer or go to the 
poor house ? Under this special privilege law six pow- 
erful corporations have been licensed in the state of 
Nebraska, for what? To do what under the regular 
usury laws of the state would render the contract void 
as to the interest and not collectable by law. Few 
people outside of the cities know that such a law has 



58 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

been written into the statutes of the state. Few people 
have had opportunity to know of the nefarious prac- 
tices of the usurer. Few people outside the cities know 
how many people must either go to the usurer to re- 
lieve distress or seek charity, or the poor house. 

The taking of usury is legalized crime. Under it one 
class is protected from the greed and rapacity of the 
usurer, while in the same statute, in the same state, the 
people who most stand in need of protection must seek 
to spell over their urgent needs by depending upon 
legalized usurers. The law should be repealed. The 
necessity of those who are in distress should be looked 
after by men who have hearts that beat in sympathy 
with those who are in trouble, instead of those who, 
like vultures, are ready to pounce upon and destroy 
even the widows and orphans of the men who have been 
unfortunate in the struggle of life. Tax-free mortgages 
and legalized usury are a disgrace to a liberty-loving 
people. They were intended as a special privilege to a 
class already favored. There are no legal exemptions 
for the farmer. His property always finds its way to 
the assessor's schedule, from his farm to his cows and 
his wife's chickens. 

But we must study the tables further. These silent 
witnesses must speak volumes to students of the times. 
They tell a story that cannot be disputed. The average 
man has little opportunity to know the facts. He has 
little time for study. He knows when he pays his taxes 
whether it is more or less than it was the previous year, 
but he has little opportunity of knowing just why it is 
higher or lower. 

The assessment of the credits of the state have at- 
tracted little attention. The country store does much 
business on credit. The wholesalers are all the time 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 59 

carrying accounts running into millions of dollars. The 
banks report their loans and discounts, every one of 
which represents obligations for future payment of 
money. This state is perhaps one of the worst chattel 
mortgage ridden states of the Union. Every chattel 
mortgage represents an obligation for future payment 
and is the security given for the payment of the obliga- 
tion when it matures. 

Under credits of these characters we find that the en- 
tire state assessed in 1920 the pitiful sum of $10,478,000. 
The state and national banks reported at about the same 
date loans and discounts amounting to $513,000,000. 
Every dollar loaned or discounted under that statement 
represented an obligation of some man or company for 
the future payment of the amount fixed in the obliga- 
tion. A large per cent of the country stores of the state 
had credits running into a total of millions of dollars. 
The implement men of the state sold wagons, plows, 
binders, spreaders, threshing machines, and much other 
merchandise on credit, and all these credits should have 
been returned for assessment. The loan sharks, of whom 
we have just been speaking, have thousands of dollars 
loaned and drawing interest. Can it be possible that 
with the loans and discounts in banks, with the credits 
in the hands of merchants and wholesalers, and with the 
money represented in the millions of dollars in the 
chattel mortgages of the state that all together they 
amount to only the sum at which they were assessed? 
Nobody will dispute the report of the State Auditor in 
1920 when he reported that in that year $141,426,800 of 
new mortgages had been filed, and none will deny that 
every county had many thousands of dollars in chattel 
mortgages that have been in force for several years, 
making a total under this item of several million more 



60 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

than was estimated in the amounts filed in 1920. 

This is an awful record, and under present means of 
knowing no man can tell just how much assessable 
property of this character has failed to find its way to 
the assessor's schedule. 

This is not all that must be considered. We find that 
the state and national banks of the entire state, and 
from all other sources returned for taxation, $8,915,650 
under the head of "Stock in State and National Banks." 
From the biennial report of the Bureau of Banking we 
ascertain that the state and national banks of the state 
are capitalized at $52,699,400. In 1920 they returned 
for assessment only $8,915,660. 

No class of business has ever been so favored in the 
community as the banks. Their opportunity for service 
is great, but that opportunity opens up many fields for 
profit. While the state assessor finds only $22,655,348 
under the head of "Money on hand in banks and trust 
companies," the quarterly statement of the banks shows 
deposits amounting to $500,000,000, and while he finds 
only $10,478,800 under "Credits and money loaned," 
their statements of loans and discounts are more than 
$513,000,000. 

If there were more than $500,000,000 on deposit in the 
banks of the state, someone must have owned that money 
and it should have been returned for assessment, and if 
the banks of the state had more than $513,000,000 in 
loans and discounts then it is safe to say that the entire 
state should have assessed more than $10,478,818, 

We must not forget that the amount returned for 
assessment under credits and money loaned includes 
every dollar returned for the entire state including every 
man who had money on hand or in banks or whether 
the money was represented by credits at the bank or in 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 61 

some other manner was in the form of a credit at the 
date of assessment. 

We do not charge that the banks deliberately mis- 
stated their obligations in the assessment of their prop- 
erty, but we do charge that under the special privileges 
granted by law, not of Nebraska alone, but of every 
state in the Union, the banks have furnished the means 
through which millions of dollars have escaped the pay- 
ment of their just obligations in the form of taxes. 

What we have just said in relation of the amounts 
returned for assessment under the heads of "money on 
hand in banks" and under "credits and money loaned" 
does not relate entirely to the failure of the banks to 
return what has already been accounted for in their 
statements to the banking department of the state, but 
just as well to the thousands of men and women who 
owned these deposits and credits and refused or neglected 
to return them for assessment. 

The greatest problem of the century is some means of 
forcing the assessment of the property of the nation, for 
as certainly as a day of adjustment may come, the 
people will learn that a large share of the assessable 
property of the state and nation fails every year to bear 
its share of the burden of government, but it has never 
failed when the time came for putting into effect great 
organized schemes for exploitation of the unwary middle 
classes, who are too busy to study the problems of reve- 
nue for themselves. 

A remedy must be found. The money that represents 
stored wealth must be compelled to pay its full share of 
the taxes. 

But the banks are not the only people who are under 
suspicion of having failed to return their full amount of 
property to the assessors. Under the head "All ^oods 



62 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

and merchandise" we assessed in 1920 the sum of $18,- 
818,200. This must include every stock of merchandise 
either on sale or in wholesale houses, from the country 
grocery to the city department store, and from the 
largest wholesale houses in every city and in every line 
of merchandise to the country retailer who must have 
some stock on hand on the first day of April. It must 
include every automobile in the hands of distributors, 
threshing machines, plows, binders, shellers, and a thou- 
sands other items of merchandise such as lumber, coal, 
meat in cold storage that belong somewhere and should 
find their way to the assessor's books and bear their 
share of the government's burdens. Will anyone venture 
a guess that the cities of Omaha and Lincoln alone did 
not have more merchandise on the first day of April 
than was assessed in Nebraska ? And if this condition is 
possible in Nebraska, what must be the condition in the 
states where there are many large cities with their wealth 
piled mountain high? We look again and we find that 
under the item "All book accounts due" the entire state 
assessed only $1,947,800. We are tempted to ask, Have 
the people suddenly adopted a policy of paying cash at 
the country grocery? Have the wholesale houses of the 
state closed their accounts with the retailers? Have the 
small merchants in every town in the state gone to a cash 
basis ? For many years we have been told of the enormous 
credit business of the country, but must we admit that all 
the credits of the state and nation, all the obligations for 
future payment have been avoiding the payment of their 
share of the tax? This seems to be the only reasonable 
conclusion, but you will say that the merchant has a right 
to deduct his bills payable from his bills receivable when 
he makes his return. This is true, but this would simply 
emphasize what we have already said as to the item of 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 63 

credits, which are obligations for payment just as truly as 
though they represented notes at the bank, or to some 
friend, and they should find their way to the assessor's 
schedule. 

One of the mysteries of the problem of revenue has 
been the assessment of the stock in the incorporated 
companies of the state. Under the item "Stock in in- 
corporated companies" in 1920 we found only $307,096. 
Men who have been in touch with Nebraska's growth for 
the last forty years will be amazed at this statement. 
They will not be able to reconcile the assessment of this 
small sum as stock in the corporations of the state with 
their knowledge of the rapid growth of the incorporated 
companies of the state during the last forty years, and 
the error or miscarriage of justice will simply shock 
their belief in what they see with their own eyes. 

From the biennial report of the Secretary of State 
November 30th, 1918, which was the last report availa- 
ble for this examination, we find that the legally in- 
corporated companies of the state had an aggregate 
capital stock of $194,471,868. This does not include 
suspended companies and we must conclude that all this 
capital stock was in effect on that date. Six very busy 
years have passed since that report was made. The} 7 
were war years, when new companies were organized 
over night. We are informed that about twelve hun- 
dred new companies have been added every year since 
that report was made. There is no report showing the 
exact amount of paid up capital stock in these corpora- 
tions, but in these days when the commercial world is 
thinking in billions instead of millions, it is safe to say 
that in the six years for which the record has not been 
compiled at least half as many dollars of capital stock 
has been authorized as were authorized during the 



64 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

period which had previously been reported. If this is 
true, we would have $291,707,802 of capital stock in 
effect at this time. 

Authorized capital stock seldom represents the exact 
amount of paid up capital, and the amounts authorized 
in some instances will fall short of the real stock upon 
which the company depends in the conduct of its busi- 
ness, but we must not lose sight of the fact that in a 
great many of the incorporated companies of the state 
the authorized capital has enhanced in value sometimes 
to double and sometimes treble its face value. Thus in 
Nebraska we have 1,009 state banks the capital stock of 
which in nearly every instance is worth a premium of 
from 50 to 100 per cent. A few of the companies have 
suffered a depreciation in their stock, but most of such 
companies have long ago been eliminated from this cal- 
culation by having been suspended. It is safe to say 
that there were many companies in the state the stock 
in which represented many times the actual value of 
their stock returned for assessment. 

Such a condition as this reveals should not be toler- 
ated. There is no reason why the invested capital of the 
state should not bear its full share of the burdens of 
government. 

But the assessment of the corporations we have just 
mentioned does not relate to that class of corporations 
known as public service corporations. The public ser- 
vice corporations of the state are valued for assessment 
at $2,686,942. There is no ready means of knowing the 
exact number of public service corporations in the state, 
but we know that there are many millions of dollars 
represented in these companies. This class of corpora- 
tions include the traction and gas companies as well as 
the telephone companies of the state. 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 65 

Public service corporations are in a class by them- 
selves. They enjoy the special protection of the laws. 
When they fail to reap a revenue that will return a fair 
dividend on the capital invested they immediately ap- 
peal to the courts for the protection promised by the 
laws. Without a single dissent the courts come to their 
relief, and no one complains, but the people are begin- 
ning to ask why, when the corporation fixes one value 
for the establishment of its right to a raise in fares for 
service, they do not fix the same value for assessment 
of their property for taxation. Have the public service 
corporations of the state been fixing one value for rates 
and another value for taxation? If they have they have 
failed to stand the supreme test of one hundred per cent 
Americanism. 

The government under which they get their right to 
serve the people has ever been good to them. Many 
times the courts have seemed to strain the law to favor 
the corporations, and they have taken the criticisms of 
the public for such apparent corporation leanings, but 
if any citizen has doubt as to the question of the double 
standard of values of the public corporations of Ne- 
braska in the fixing of one value for rates and an en- 
tirely different value for taxation he will have that 
doubt dispelled by an examination of the records of the 
State Railway Commission, and of the courts from the 
lowest court having jurisdiction to the supreme court of 
the United States. It is a fact that brooks no denial 
that in spite of the special protection public service 
corporations enjoy under the laws, and in spite of 
friendly courts, they have provoked just criticism by 
refusing to bear their full share of the burdens of gov- 
ernment. 

The corporations of this state have never borne their 



66 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

just share of the burdens of government. Their power 
of hiding has been little less than supreme. The public 
service corporations have lost the vision of co-operation 
that should exist between them and the people they 
serve. In their autocratic demands they have forgotten 
that the people have rights that should ever be respected 
if they can hope for friendly patronage. They have 
forgotten that even the serpent may turn and avenge 
itself of the wrongs that superior power inflicts. In- 
deed, the serpent has already turned, and the traction 
companies of the entire country are pleading for sym- 
pathy. The raise in rates only opens the old wounds, 
and reminds the patron of autocratic demands when 
their power seemed supreme. We may charge it to the 
automobile, but in fact at least a part of the strained 
condition in these times of trouble can safely be charged 
to the reaction against a power that would not remem- 
ber until his "ox" was being gored to extermination. 

A new rule of assessment must be applied to the public 
service corporations of the state and nation, and that 
rule must compel the valuation of the company's hold- 
ings at the same value for assessment as that claimed 
for the fixing of rates for service. 

Too little attention has been given to the valuation of 
the corporation properties of the state. The incorpor- 
ated stock companies of the state and nation have in- 
vited and winked at crime. Their plans of organiza- 
tion have in many instances been nothing less than legal- 
ized crime. The public spirit and patriotism of the 
people have been appealed to for aid in the organization 
of large enterprises only to pave the way through which 
the unwary and trustful might be looted of their hard 
earned money. Through intricate schemes of organiza- 
tion and through manipulation of first preferred stock, 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 67 

second preferred stock, and then common stock, all in a 
jumble in one organization, the means has been provided 
of misleading the innocent public, simply to aid in the 
manipulation of dividend earnings, and finally to loot 
them of their original investment. 

A law must be passed protecting the people from the 
injustice and wrong that comes of these manipulations 
of stock issues in the corporations that are being organ- 
ized for the transaction of the business that necessitates 
more capital than an ordinary individual can supply. 
There can be no excuse for the issuance of more than 
one kind of stock in a corporation that seeks to do a 
legitimate business. Too many times the people have 
been deceived by the several issues of stock under high 
sounding names, and too many times these issues have 
been made for the purpose of deceiving the innocent in- 
vestor, and finally looting him of hard earned money. 

Every corporation should be compelled to keep on file 
with the proper authorities of the state a complete list 
of every dollar issued in stock and the owner of such 
stock, and then every dollar of the stock in every com- 
pany doing business under the laws of the state should 
be assessed and the taxes paid by the company, and then 
it should be deducted from the dividends to be paid to 
the owners of the stock. Such a law would be a pro- 
tection to the state as well as the investors, and it would 
prevent the deception that has so often been practiced 
for the purpose of looting an innocent public. 

The people have too little understood the intricacies 
of corporation management, with their power to mis- 
lead and deceive through their varied stock issues. 

Because these things have been true, tax-dodging, and 
one subterfuge after another for shifting tax burdens, 
have reduced the assessable property of the country un- 



68 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

til the burdens upon the people who will not shift those 
burdens amounts to confiscation. No government has a 
right to levy confiscatory taxes. There could be no more 
fruitful cause of revolution. It has been the cause of 
more complaint and more unpunished crime than every 
other cause combined. 

The problem of a just system of revenue is at this 
time indeed the "Nation's Dance of Death." A righteous 
solution to the problem must be found. That solution 
must convert every tax-dodger into a good citizen. It 
must break the power of that combination of money 
lenders that so successfully promoted the passage of the 
law exempting real estate mortgages from taxation. 
The word "tax-free" must never again be written into 
the laws of any state of the Union. Twenty-seven bil- 
lion dollars of tax-free securities in this nation is a 
special privilege that is dangerous to a free people in 
these days when the ledger balances show such a large 
per cent of the nation's wealth already in the ownership 
of so few of its citizens. 

I well know my readers are asking the question, Can 
a law be passed that will remedy these things and com- 
pel the assessment of all the property within a given 
jurisdiction? Such a law can and must be passed, but 
organized capital is so powerful, and its demands are so 
urgent, that it will take nothing less than a supreme 
remedy or effort. It is easy to cry out against unjust 
taxation, but when a remedy is offered the cry of the 
right of government to interfere with the assumed rights 
of certain classes of the people will be questioned with 
vigor. Can we make the people understand the serious- 
ness of this problem? Can they be made to understand 
the dangers of delay? Will the organized capital of 
the country willingly submit to a law sufficiently drastic 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 69 

to bring the desired results? When we attempt to re- 
store the tax-free securities to the assessor's schedules 
will the beneficiaries of that special privilege submit 
without a murmur? Neither the farmers nor the labor- 
ers of the nation have been guilty of tax-dodging, for 
the little property they possess is ever in the sight of the 
assessor. Somehow every taxpayer of this nation must 
be made to understand that the day has come and the 
necessity as well when no citizen and no class of citizens 
can unload from his shoulders to the shoulders of an- 
other class the burden of government without protest. 

For fifty years the question of a righteous revenue 
law has agitated the people. Every legislature in the 
nation has been besieged for relief without avail. The 
petitions of the people have gone unheeded, but the day 
for a remedy must be found without delay. 

The Remedy 

The basic principle of any righteous revenue law is 
based upon that well-established doctrine that "A citi- 
zen has no right to protection of government until he 
has done his whole duty in the support of government." 

A citizen has not done his whole duty in the support 
of government until every dollar of his property has 
been returned for assessment and he has either paved 
the way to pay, or paid, his share of the taxes for the 
support of that government. 

It must be made the duty of every citizen to remove 
that obligation without being hunted down by an asses- 
sor and beseech ed to return his property for assessment. 

Up to this time we have placed upon the citizen no 
obligation to return his property to the assessor, but we 
have made it the duty of the assessor to hunt the citizen 
and secure the assessment of his property. 



10 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

A Personal Responsibility Registration 

In every city of the nation the citizen must qualify 
himself for citizenship, and the right to vote, by regis- 
tering his qualifications before the proper authorities. 
Is there any good reason why a law should not be passed 
requiring every citizen to register his qualifications to 
cast his vote at the election, and on the same date every 
year to return his schedule of assessment? Such a law 
shifts the responsibility of assessment from the state to 
the shoulders of the citizen. A faithful co-operation 
with the government in the return of one's property for 
assessment would be a badge of honor upon the head of 
every man who would in good faith comply with this 
simple duty by placing his cards upon the table face up. 

I said "qualify himself for citizenship," and I want it 
understood that this must mean that and nothing less. 
No man or woman should be permitted to vote or other- 
wise exercise the rights of citizenship until he or she 
had qualified himself for citizenship by the payment of 
taxes for the support of the government and that quali- 
fication must come on the solicitation of the citizen and 
not the government. 

Every year the county assessor would furnish every 
citizen through the mail or in person at his office a 
blank schedule for the return of a complete inventory of 
his property. This schedule would be the clearest ques- 
tionaire possible, providing for a complete description 
of every article in every class of property, and the law 
would provide that the schedule must be returned to the 
assessor in person within given and fixed dates. This 
schedule must provide every citizen a complete registra- 
tion and the right to vote at the elections shall rest upon 
that registration the same as it rests at this time upon 
his registration in the city. 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 11 

All property of every description must be returned 
and must pay tax at its reasonable cash value. The 
value placed upon all property, both personal and real, 
shall for all purposes of fixing a just legal rental rate 
and for all judicial purposes, be taken as the cash value 
of the property. 

Upon complaint in writing that any citizen has failed 
to comply with the law as to registration and the return 
of his schedule as provided by law, or upon the com- 
plaint that any citizen has undervalued or overvalued 
his property for assessment or has neglected or refused 
to assess his property as provided by law, a summons 
would be issued by the county assessor citing the said 
party to appear before himself or before the county 
judge or any justice of the peace within his precinct to 
answer the complaint, which trial and other proceed- 
ings shall in all respects comply with the summons, 
service and trial in the justice jurisdiction in any case 
at law. Upon proof of any allegation in the complaint 
the assessor or court shall make a finding of the facts 
and render judgment thereon in the same manner as a 
judgment is rendered in a case at law. 

If in any trial as above stated the court shall find 
that the defendant has been guilty of withholding from 
assessment any property that should have been assessed, 
for the first offense the judgment shall be for assessment 
of the property so withheld, and the payment of all the 
costs of the trial. Upon the second offense for failure 
to return any property for assessment, which offense 
shall be construed to be complete when judgment is ren- 
dered against the defendant, the judgment shall be for 
the sale of the property described in the complaint and 
found to have been withheld and the proceeds, after 
paying the costs, shall be deposited with the county 



12 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

treasurer to the credit of the general fund of the county. 
The said sale to be made at public auction in the same 
manner and upon the same notice as is required at this 
time for the sale in the foreclosure of chattel mortgages. 

This is legal confiscation. It is made "legal" simply 
as the just penalty for refusal to qualify as a citizen 
while claiming the protection of a citizen. The remedy 
may seem drastic, but when we consider that it can only 
be inflicted on the second offense, few would object. 

Such a law as this would place upon the assessor's 
schedule double the property that at this time finds its 
way to that honored place. It would place nearly every 
dollars worth of property upon the tax list and make it 
do its duty toward the support of government. 

It would unload from the backs of the farmers and 
middle classes one-half of the burden that is today being 
borne by them. 

It would forever settle the question of rent profiteer- 
ing, because the values that would form the basis of 
rentals would be the same as the values upon which the 
tax was levied and paid. 

Such a law would necessitate no constitutional changes 
and could be rendered effective the year it was enacted 
and signed by the governor. 

Under this law every citizen would feel that he owed 
to his state and to the nation as well the patriotic duty 
of qualifying himself for citizenship, first by the pay- 
ment of his just proportion of the tax, and second, by 
registering his qualification for citizenship and keeping 
that qualification complete by renewing his registration 
when he moved his residence. 

Then the last, but not the least, value that would at- 
tach to this system of registration would accrue after 
every state in the Union had adopted the system and 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 73 

paved the way for the finding of the amount every man 
would owe to the government as an income tax. Few 
people have yet come to understand the complexity and 
the expense of collecting that just tax. 

No nation can ever be qualified to make intelligent 
laws until it has by some authority put itself in a posi- 
tion to know by an annual accounting its exact assets 
and liabilities. This law is the nation's opportunity for 
such an accounting, and it will be every state's oppor- 
tunity for the same reason. 

When such a law is enacted in every state in the 
Union there will be no excuse for the complaints that 
have shamed this nation since its very birth about tax- 
dodging. 

I will not need to call attention to the method of pro- 
cedure to bring about this very desirable result. Every 
candidate for the legislature must be pledged to the en- 
actment of such a law before he can hope for the sup- 
port of the voters who believe in the law. The state is 
the first unit from which must radiate the fight for this 
reform, and the slogan for the campaign must be, "There 
Is No Room in America for Tax-Dodging." 

A Belated Testimony* 

Since writing the above chapter on "The Nation's 
Dance of Death," the Nebraska Legislature has vindi- 
cated my statement that there was a growing tendency 
in the nation to exempt from taxation all properties 
known as money and securities. This tendency has been 
in process of development for several years, but when 
my chapter was completed it had not occurred to me 
that in these strenuous days of over-hio-h taxes that any 



* To our readers outside of Nebraska : The above addition to our chapter 
on "The Nation's Dance of Death" was written especially for the people of 
Nebraska. If it shall aid the people of other states in perfecting a reform of 
their revenue laws we shall be content.— The author. 



74 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

man would have it in his heart to lay upon the already 
over-burdened taxpayers a heavier burden than they 
had already been obliged to bear. 

I am writing these additional words to let the people 
of Nebraska know just what its legislature has done, as 
well as to speak a word of warning to the other states 
of the Union that they may profit by Nebraska's mis- 
fortune. 

For more than forty years the people have complained 
of unequal and unjust taxation. The distrust of our 
system of assessment has become so general, and the 
tax burdens have mounted to such unexplainable pro- 
portions, that the people with one accord are crying out 
for relief. It has been indeed "The Nation's Dance of 
Death." 

The money of Nebraska has never found its way to 
the assessor's schedule. At this time more than $600,- 
000,000 is sitting back in its seclusion, reaping a harvest 
of interest, enjoying the protection of our courts, and 
laughing at the law. Promises for future payment of 
money in the shape of secured and unsecured notes 
amounting to more than $700,000,000 are dead to any 
responsibility in sharing the burdens of government. 
Ten counties of the state possess more merchandise than 
has ever been assessed in the entire state. The great 
corporations of the state, with their millions of dollars 
of dividend-bearing stocks are paying almost no taxes 
at all. There are more dollars of live judgments on the 
dockets of one of the justice courts of Lancaster county 
than were ever assessed in the entire state, in spite of 
the fact that the judgments of the state amount to sev- 
eral million dollars. Nearly $500,000,000 of real estate 
mortgages have already been exempt from taxation in 
Nebraska, and the money so exempt in the United 
States reaches the enormous sum of $27,000,000,000. 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 15 

The constitutional provision under which a new reve- 
nue law was enacted in the last session of our legislature 
is here given that the reader may know just what is the 
constitutional authority upon which the new law is 
based. 

Constitutional Provisions 

Section 1. The necessary revenue of the state, and 
its governmental subdivisions, shall be raised by taxa- 
tion in such a manner as the Legislature may direct, 
but taxes shall be levied by valuation uniformly and 
proportionately upon all tangible property and fran- 
chises and taxes uniform as to class may be levied by 
valuation upon all other property. Taxes, other than 
property taxes, may be authorized by law. Existing 
revenue laws shall continue in effect until changed by 
the legislature. 

Section 2. The property of the state and its gov- 
ernmental subdivisions shall be exempt from taxation. 
The legislature by general law may exempt property 
owned by and used exclusively for agricultural and hor- 
ticultural societies, and property owned and used exclu- 
sively for educational, religious, charitable or cemetery 
purposes, when such property is not owned or used for 
financial gain or profit to either owner or user. House- 
hold goods of the value of two hundred ($200) dollars 
to each family shall be exempt from taxation. The 
legislature by general law may provide that the in- 
creased value of land by reason of shade or ornamental 
trees planted along the highway shall not be taken into 
account in the assessment of such land. No property 
shall be exempt from taxation except as provided in 
this section. 

Under the legislative interpretation of these sections 
of the constitution a law was passed providing for the 



76 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

assessment of all money, notes, bills of exchange, cer- 
tificates of deposit in banks, trust companies, and all 
such properties under class one under the interpretation 
that these properties are intangible, and will pay tax on 
25 per cent of its assessed valuation. 

Under class two of intangible property all bonds of 
the state, counties, townships, cities, villages, school dis- 
tricts and irrigation and drainage districts are assessed 
and taxed at one-tenth of one per cent of their actual 
value, or 10 cents on every $100. 

I challenge the interpretation of the constitution that 
calls these properties "intangible". Webster says: "A 
thing is tangible when it is perceptible to the touch, or 
capable of being possessed or realized." Under this defi- 
nition would you say that money is intangible? Is 
money not perceptible to the touch and capable of being 
possessed or realized? Would not the same be true as 
to the other classes noted under class one? If they are 
perceptible to the touch they are tangible and should be 
assessed as such, and under that interpretation the con- 
stitutionality of the law is questioned. 

I do not want to seem harsh or over-critical, but I be- 
lieve this interpretation of the constitution is a delib- 
erate and a premeditated excuse for the exemption of 
over a billion dollars worth of the property of the state 
on a false definition of the meaning of the words "tan- 
gible and intangible". 

But let us suppose that these definitions are right, and 
that every dollar of these classes of property are assessed 
at the rates authorized by law, then seventy-five per 
cent of the property found in the state in class one is 
exempt, and in the second class nearly every dollar is 
exempt. 

Farmers and owners of city real estate in Nebraska, 



THE NATION'S DANCE OF DEATH 77 

here is the problem as you will find it when you pay 
your taxes. If your farm is worth $20,000 you must 
pay tax upon that value. The same is true of city real 
estate. If your $20,000 is cash, certificates of deposit or 
secured notes, it will be assessed at just $5,000, and the 
other $15,000 will be exempt. If your $20,000 is in- 
vested in interest-bearing county, state, school district, 
city, village or irrigation bonds you will be taxed under 
the new law on the $20,000 so invested just $16. 

This is an awful story. Instead of a revision of the 
revenue laws of the state, we have been cursed by a law 
of exemption. Already overburdened by taxes and low 
prices, the people needed more tax money instead of 
more tax-drones and tax-dodgers. 

This law must be repealed. It is legalized exemption 
of seventy-five cents out of every dollar of the best 
property man can own, and it is legalized exemption of 
practically every dollar of every form of commercial 
paper. 

Exemption of private property from taxation is legal- 
ized crime. 

They tell us that the owners of these properties refuse 
to assess them. I admit that little of this class of prop- 
erty has ever found its way to the assessor's schedule, 
but will this fact excuse the passage of a law of exemp- 
tion? Will exemption relieve the tax-burdened people 
of the state? Must the law-abiding people of Nebraska 
acknowledge that our law, and the power to make and 
enforce laws, are impotent? Are they impotent just 
when they must be applied to men of means? 

There is a remedy. Every dollar that enjoys the pro- 
tection of our courts must pay its full share of the bur- 
den of government. 

The remedy is in your own hands. Will you apply it? 



78 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 



Chapter VI 

GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 

In the campaign eight years after the birth of this 
republic two great principles divided the people. Alex- 
ander Hamilton led the forces of the Federalists and 
stood for a strong central government, and Thomas 
Jefferson led the forces of the Republicans and firmly 
advocated a government in which supreme confidence 
was reposed in the people. He was elected the second 
president of the republic on a promise of opposition to 
monarchy, preservation of the rights of the states, free- 
dom of religion, free speech, free commerce, and internal 
defense. 

This campaign was the beginning of government by 
party. Mr. Jefferson's election was an endorsement of 
the principles for which he stood, and those principles 
were in fact the first political platform that was ever 
enunciated by any party. 

These were the formative days of the republic. Great 
principles were everything. Men were simply the means 
through which government must function. No patriot 
had ever thought of the spoils of office, for there were 
no spoils. The republic had indeed been born. Its 
swaddling clothes had been discarded, but the spirit of 
autocracy was not yet dead. These conspiracies of par- 
ties immediately began to hinder the administration, and 
for a time it seemed that government by a ruling class 
was inevitable. 

Washington, becoming alarmed, in his farewell ad- 
dress, raised his voice in warning against the dangers of 
the partisan spirit. He said, "The party spirit always 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 79 

distracts the public councils, and enfeebles the public 
administration. It agitates the community with ill- 
founded jealousies, of one party against the other. It 
is a fire not to be quenched. It demands a uniform 
vigilance to prevent its bursting into flame, lest instead 
of warning it should consume." 

For many years after this first great struggle for 
party supremacy political parties were not so active, in- 
deed the dwellers in the thirteen colonies were homo- 
geneous, but in their infancy, and youth, and even in 
their middle age, the party spirit did not dominate the 
policies of the nation, but in the days preceding the 
civil war Washington's warning was more than realized 
in those anxious days of compromise, but it was not un- 
til the nation was in the very throes of revolution that 
the people came to understand the real dangers that 
threatened the republic through the partisan spirit. 

The partisan spirit again runs high. Government by 
party has come to mean nothing more than the "ins and 
the outs". Party platforms have come to mean nothing. 
Expediency writes them, and they are either endorsed 
or rejected without opportunity for study. The political 
press of the nation, with a power that has never been 
rightly understood, aided by men trained in all the arts 
of propaganda, are scattered broadcast over the land to 
shape the political opinions of the people. No man can 
measure the influence that is behind these powerful 
agencies, in their power to shape the policies of the 
political parties, and the opinions of the people. 

Partisanship has no conscience. It stands for any- 
thing to win. It aids in the building of machines for 
the advancement of men who represent great corpora- 
tions, instead of the people. It pays political debts by 
the appointment of untrained or incompetent subordi- 



80 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

nates, and boasts that the spoils of office belong to the 
victors. It defeats wholesome legislation wholly because 
it originated in the mind of a member of the opposite 
party. In this atmosphere of prejudice and misrepre- 
sentation our boys and girls, the men and women of the 
next generation, are getting their first lessons in govern- 
ment, while christian men and women are standing aloof 
from participation in party politics because of the vile 
odors of graft, and bossism, and misrepresentation that 
so truthfully belong to partisan politics. 

Political parties have failed to function. The nomi- 
nation and election of a president has come to be a na- 
tional disgrace. The "We demands" that are urged be- 
fore a national convention lose sight of the people and 
are urged to give votes to the party endorsing them. 

These questions should engross the mind of every 
thinking American who wants to see his government 
function efficiently. 

Are political parties necessary to a republican form of 
government? Do they aid the people to qualify them- 
selves for intelligent voting? Can we hope to secure 
the services of the best qualified men for office through 
the functioning of our present day political system? 
Have the dominant political parties aided or hindered 
the people in securing the great reforms that have en- 
grossed the mind of the people for the last half century ? 

I want to answer the last question, but before answer- 
ing it, I want to challenge the great men of both old 
parties, the men who have helped to write the history of 
this nation for the last half century, to point to a single 
great moral reform that has been written into law in 
that time, upon which either of those dominant parties 
has ever spoken a word in its national platform either 
for or against. 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 81 

For a century this nation had been shaken to its very 
foundation by that great moral question of the right of 
one human being to own and hold another human being 
in slavery, and the right to buy and sell him as cattle 
and hogs are sold. Political compromises stood in the 
way of the settlement of the real questions at issue until 
such men as Wendell Phillips, Garrison, and Lovejoy, 
and such women as Harriet Beecher Stowe cried out, 
"Human slavery is a crime against God, and it must be 
abolished." In sunny southland the brightest and best 
of America's young manhood was sacrificed upon the 
altar of this nation to pay the penalty of a political 
compromise upon a principle of right by allowing the 
slaveholders in the territory already holding slaves to 
continue to hold, and to sell them as in the past, and 
refusing to allow it to be extended into new territory. 

Tn the great campaign for president in which Lincoln 
was elected the conflict raged around the question of 
state's rights instead of dealing fearlessly with the real 
question of any man's right to own and hold a human 
being in bondage. 

After the election, Mr. Lincoln in his first inaugural 
address said: "I have no purpose either directly or in- 
directly to interfere with the institutions of slavery. I 
have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do 
so." Had it been possible to present this question di- 
rectly to the people in its real meaning, without the 
bickerings that go with our system of government by 
party, the civil Avar might have been settled with a pen 
instead of the sword. 

It must be written as a fact of history that it took a 
hundred years of compromise, and bitterness, and bicker- 
ings to break the shackles that bound the limbs of four 
million black slaves, and to write into the constitution 



82 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

of this nation that the right of property in human flesh 
is forever prohibited. Rivers of blood, millions of 
money and treasure, a century of bitter strife and 
hatred, because the political parties of this nation had 
not the moral courage to speak out fearlessly upon this 
greatest question of the century. 

Again I challenge the system of government by party, 
and this time I call the mothers of the nation to wit- 
ness that neither of the dominant parties of the nation 
could ever be induced to cry out against that legalized 
monster of iniquity, the saloon. For a hundred years 
the purest of American manhood and womanhood 
pleaded the cause of a saloonless nation and urged the 
political parties to aid in its destruction, but their pleas 
were never heard. Refusal was the rankest cowardice. 
It took a hundred years of agitation, and sacrifice, and 
argument, and then finally the argument of commercial 
waste in time of a great war, to awaken the conscience 
of the politicians of this nation, and get them to speak 
upon this vital national disgrace. I assert that every 
home that was ruined, every crime that was committed, 
every tear that was shed as the result of strong drink, 
and the open saloon, was the direct result of, and is 
chargeable to, the co'imrdice and inefficiency of govern- 
ment by party. 

But I want the women of the nation to stand again 
as witnesses upon the cowardice of political parties. 
Since the birth of the republic they have been pleading 
the cause of equal suffrage in vain. We fought the 
revolutionary war because we said "Taxation without 
representation is tyranny." The women pleaded that 
they were being taxed without the right to speak in the 
making of the laws, and that if taxation without repre- 
sentation was tyranny in 1776 it has been tyranny ever 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 83 

since, but in this great question of right it took a hun- 
dred years of cowardice, and then again a world war, 
to submit to the states the right to vote upon this great 
question. We cannot resist the temptation to call atten- 
tion to the supreme bravery of the political parties in 
those last solicitous days of the campaign, when the 
ratification of the proposed amendment for suffrage was 
in the balance, how both parties tried to convince the 
women of this nation that they and their party were the 
staunch friends of the women and their right to suffrage. 
I am not done yet, for I want to call the political 
parties once again to answer for their shortcomings 
through their beautiful system of government by party. 
Since the very beginning of this government the obliga- 
tion of electing men to represent the states in the great- 
est legislative body on earth was by our constitution 
placed upon the legislatures of the several states. The 
story of election of United States senators furnishes the 
most disgraceful chapter in our history. A campaign 
in which a senator was to be elected began with the 
nomination of men for a seat in the legislature, and 
frequently the campaign did not end until the disgrace- 
ful struggle had occupied an entire session. In these 
campaigns men stood for election who were known as 
the pliant tools of railroads and other great corporation 
interests. Candidates for representatives were pledged 
to the support of a program outlined by the great corpo- 
rations and to candidates for the senate who were the 
tools of those corporations. They were without shame 
in their disgraceful fight, and in the spending of money. 
It was common knowledge that money flowed freely in 
such campaigns and the men who were elected to repre- 
sent the people were in fact the representatives of great 
monied interests whose hearts never once beat in svm- 



8| BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

pathy with the great struggling masses of the people. 
Pre-election campaigns were charged and surcharged 
with the vilest political abuse, and the all-engrossing 
purpose of the candidate was to find favor with the 
candidate for the senate who had the biggest barrel. 
Special interest election of the United States senators 
was the rule of the politics of those days and from that 
time until the disgraceful seating of the late famous 
Senator Newbury of Michigan b}^ the Senate of the 
United States, and later by a partisan vote in the senate, 
political corruption has disgraced the system of govern- 
ment by party, while the duly elected senators have dis- 
honored their seats in that great body. 

Did the great political parties ever speak for the cor- 
rection of this abuse of the principles of a free people? 
They never did, and that question was not settled until 
a great protest party placed the vileness of that system 
of election before the people with such emphasis as to 
compel the men whose seats were dishonored to act for 
the security of their own political lives. Failure to 
bring this disgraceful system of electing men to repre- 
sent us in the senate of the United States to a vote of 
the people for more than a century must be charged 
directly to our cowardly and inefficient system of gov- 
ernment by party and every act and vote of those men 
is directly chargeable to that system, for the people all 
the time knew the system was wrong and would have 
stamped it out a hundred years ago if they could have 
had the opportunity. 

I now approach a subject that has been brought to 
the attention of every thoughtful American in the last 
fifty years with special force. The indictments already 
recorded against government by party have been serious 
indeed, but when we remember that this nation has 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 85 

three times within the last half century been called to 
mourn the loss of a chief executive by the assassin's 
bullet, thoughtful men are beginning to ask the reason. 
Must it be said of this nation of freemen that the fin- 
ished product of our civilization must find its remedies 
for the wrongs of government in the assassin's bullet? 
In the name of the American people I protest even 
such an insinuation. While we must admit the awful 
crimes that bowed our heads in grief, we deny that in 
either instance the incentive to commit the atrocious 
crime was a reflection of the spirit of the institutions of 
our great government. It must be recorded that in each 
instance we Avere called to mourn as a result of the 
failure of our system of government by party to settle 
the great questions by applying the remedy of reason, 
instead of permitting political parties to thwart the will 
of the people by political cowardice in dealing with the 
moral and political questions that must be dealt with 
through the processes of the law. 

Americans ! We must awake before it is too late. 
The "We demands" of the special interests of this in- 
tensely political generation bodes no good for the people. 
Demands for new laws should come from the people 
after they have had opportunity for investigation and 
then the problem must be presented to the electorate 
through the forum and a people's press. 

Partisan prejudice is an unsafe guide in these days 
when it seems that this is the governing force in the 
world. The greatest danger that America ever faced 
since the earliest days of the republic is the danger that 
an ultra partisanship fastens upon a free people. We 
have been pleased to call ourselves a Christian nation, 
but our political system of government by party, with 
its prejudices, and spoils, precludes the application of 



86 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

the commonest principles of the Christian doctrines as 
they were taught by the Christ. Under that system the 
people have no means of studying great questions with- 
out prejudice, and they have no teachers except those 
who are already unfitted by a life of education in the 
school of political prejudice and political spoils. Under 
that system law fails to keep pace with the evolution of 
business. The men whom we elect to represent us in 
our congress are expected by their party constituents to 
return to the people whom they represent a full share of 
the congressional loot, known as the political spoils, and 
at least a part of the contents of "The Pork Barrel". 
We have come to estimate their ability by their power 
to deliver these things, instead of by the measure of con- 
structive statesmanship. The first year of every presi- 
dential administration is largely devoted to a division of 
the spoils of office, and the most effective argument for 
the political policies that are advocated is the welfare 
of the party, instead of the good of the people. 

The man who depends on the party label to guide him 
in voting is not worthy a seat in any legislative hall. If 
the people, want intelligent voting, either at the ballot 
box or in the halls of the legislature or congress, they 
must abolish the party label and in some way force the 
men who represent them to vote on principle, and to do 
some real thinking on their own account, and then show 
sufficient manhood to express the convictions that come 
to them as a result of that thinking in an unprejudiced, 
non-political vote upon every question presented to 
them. 

So common is the practice of appealing to the party 
to stand for "party loyalty" instead of a principle, that 
someone has asked the question, "Why a legislature?" 
The man who propounded the question answered it as 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 87 

follows : "Take a hundred and thirty men from all walks 
of life. Give seventy-five per cent of them a seventh 
grade education, fifteen per cent a college education, and 
let the balance struggle up from the third grade to the 
high school. Now round them up in a strange town 
under conditions they have not seen before, under 
strange influences, al] strangers to each other. Then put 
them in two rooms called a house and a senate, organize 
them into committees and in the back of the head of 
each one inject a mean, sneaking ambition to hold a 
state job and move to town. Then, Bang! Slap down 
on them from the outside a hundred questions on states- 
manship and laws they never heard of before, things 
involving millions of dollars and the good fortune of a 
million people. Then on the top of all this give them 
just sixty days in which to solve these questions. It is 
nonsense to expect good results. It is a guarantee of 
misgovernment. It may have worked in another gen- 
eration, but it will not work in this. Such a scheme 
was devised for another age." 

Our government is a republic. It is supposed to de- 
rive all its just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned, the people. These powers are administered 
through representatives. Our constitution fixed the 
three branches of government, each with its separate 
function, and each clothed with its specific authority. 
These separate branches of government are known as 
the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. The 
legislative to make the laws, the executive to administer 
them, and the judiciary to interpret them. 

The making of that constitution was the most stupend- 
ous task that was ever undertaken by any generation of 
men. It excited the admiration of the whole civilized 
world. It laid the broadest foundation for representa- 
tive government that had yet been laid. 



88 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Our first lessons in representative government were 
learned in England, because that was the mother coun- 
try, and was the nearest type of a democracy. With a 
new vision of statesmanship our forefathers worked this 
government out on a scale and with a magnitude that is 
without parallel in human history. 

Since we received our first lessons from England, no 
one is surprised that the arrangement of our legislative 
machinery is one of the things that most nearly copies 
the English system. The House of Lords corresponding 
to our Senate, and the House of Commons corresponding 
to our House of Representatives. 

The American people have come to know that there 
are dangers lurking in our English system of law mak- 
ing. They know that the arguments that were made 
when we adopted it are the very arguments that after 
nearly two centuries are being used against it. 

There is perhaps no function of government that calls 
for so much statesmanship, so much patriotism, and so 
much "horse sense" as the function of law making. Law 
making is creative. Someone must blaze the way be- 
fore the world can follow. At the time our constitution 
was in making the way in our republic had not been 
blazed. Someone has said that "History is philosophy 
teaching by example," but history and philosophy alike 
failed to offer suggestions to our forefathers. Out of 
the necessities of their new conditions our forefathers 
were obliged to work out the problems for themselves. 

In view of these facts will anyone wonder that they 
made mistakes and that in these days of evolution in 
every affair of government and business there has been 
necessity for change? We have changed the old consti- 
tution that was framed with such wonderful wisdom, 
nineteen times, and it must be changed again, perhaps 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 89 

many times. Will anyone who reads these pages say 
that that constitution is too sacred to suffer amendment? 
The people well know that in the evolution of the social 
order, nothing is written with more definiteness than the 
laws of change. Changed conditions in every walk of 
life necessitates new laws to meet the demands of these 
changes. 

A hundred and fifty years of crucial test in the fire of 
political conflict has taught the people that our legisla- 
tive machinery, and its application by the political par- 
ties, has failed, and is certain to continue to fail in 
these days of complex government and economic changes. 
We indeed have a representative government, but that 
government is so slow and so cumbersome, under the 
machinery of political adjustments, that the onward 
march of industrial progress is a half century ahead of 
the law-making power. While our congress quibbles 
over minor matters for political advantage, the com- 
mercial interests, with their well-tried schemes of 
corporation organization for commercial and industrial 
achievements, are far ahead of the possibility of intel- 
ligent regulation. Political expediency has so retarded 
the legislative machinery in its action that in state and 
nation alike we have witnessed the failure of our law 
makers to answer the popular demands for new laws so 
urgently needed. Do we not have the evidence every 
week that our law makers either pass or defeat legisla- 
tion wholly without other consideration than the consid- 
eration of party loyalty? The majority party will re- 
fuse consideration of much needed measures simply be- 
cause they originated in the opposite party. To remedy 
these things our representatives must be made respon- 
sive to the people. They must come to know that they 
must return to the people, not industry alone, but their 
best judgment. 



90 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Where lies the fault? What is the remedy? The 
fault is easily found, for every intelligent American can 
put his finger on it without erring. 

I have said that when our constitution makers per- 
mitted two houses in the legislative body they copied 
the law-making body of aristocratic England. I well 
know the arguments that are so ably advanced for the 
continuance of that system, but I have never heard a 
single argument that appealed to me as being founded 
upon sound reasoning for a bicameral legislative body. 
Why two houses in a legislative body? In congress, as 
well as in every legislative body in the states, it must be 
recorded that more legislation, and more important 
legislation, has been defeated by jealousies alone than 
many times have been passed. The bicameral legislature 
simply doubles the possibility of wrong. 

A Unicameral Legislature 

The first step that must be taken to restore this gov- 
ernment to the people is the destruction of the bicameral 
legislative system of law making in every state as well 
as in our congress, and in its place establish by consti- 
tutional provision the unicameral system and reducing 
the single house about one-half. The one smaller body 
laboring under no handicap of political bossism would 
pass more and better considered laws in thirty days than 
a bicameral legislature would pass in sixty days. This 
step must be accomplished before the nation can hope 
for the beginning of the solution of the other problems 
that must be solved before the people can realize a gov- 
ernment of the people, for the people, and by the people. 

To accomplish this first step is a simple thing in gov- 
ernment. Without any other machinery than the ballot 
men can be elected who are pledged to vote and work 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 91 

for an amendment to the constitution providing for a 
unicameral legislative body, and when the people have 
studied the cumbersome system that has prevailed for 
nearly two centuries they will be enthusiastic for the 
change. 

Do the people realize with what levity our legislators 
are considering and passing upon important issues in 
this country? Do they realize how many measures are 
being considered without discussion? What this nation 
needs is an unbiased study and discussion of every state 
and national question of government, from the specific 
application of the fundamental principle to the prac- 
tical application of the principle to the law. We must 
adopt some constructive policy that accepts economic 
facts as they are, and instead of trying to rebut, refute 
and disable, we must harness them in the public interest 
and make them our servants. 

The object of education is citizenship, and a proper 
preparation for it. Citizenship in this republic at this 
time is desperately practical. We never stood in as 
grave need of a practical study of the needs of this 
nation as we do at this time. The nation was never in 
as receptive a political mood as it is at this time. We 
have too long left the shaping of our national policies, 
and the making of our laws, to those who represented 
special interests instead of the people. We must insist 
that the rights of citizenship in a republic place upon 
the possessor of those rights corresponding responsibili- 
ties and duties. The problems that confront us at this 
time are so vital to the very existence of the republic 
that we must adjust the machinery of government to 
suit the tasks to be performed, and to do this we must 
make a problem solving campaign such as this nation 
never saw. 



92 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

The beginning of that problem-solving campaign 
must give promise that it will restore the government to 
the people. It has not been a government of the people 
since it became a government by party. 

Can this be done? Let the answer to this question be 
weighed carefully, for that answer is to point the way to 
the beginning of a new era in state and national law- 
making alike. 

No reform can hope to gain favor with a thoughtful 
people that tears down the old structure before it has 
the machinery for a new structure to take its place. 
The bicameral system of legislation has failed. It has 
failed because it has never been able to consider the 
laws that were needed before it began the stupendous 
task of writing new laws to take the place of the old 
laws that were to be discarded. It has failed because 
it has depended upon men to make the laws who, before 
their election, were bound hand and foot to a political 
party with an explicit — or an implied — promise of party 
loyalty. The whole machinery of bicameral legislation 
is organized with the express purpose of passing the 
laws that the party in power suggests. Government by 
party recognizes no authority but the party in power. 
A christian democracy recognizes no authority but the 
authority of the people with their right to advise. Be- 
hind a christian democracy will ever stand that great 
army of men and women, ready and with the machinery 
to express their disapproval, and give their advice on 
any measure that is being considered, but it must be 
understood that such advice would seldom be needed, 
for only on a very few measures would there be serious 
difference of opinion when political considerations were 
eliminated. 

The basic principle of a christian democracy is a well- 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 93 

grounded belief in majority rule. No political preju- 
dices would ever stand in the way of a vote for the best 
qualified men to do the work demanded. Once elected, 
the legislator would be under promise to obey the man- 
dates of the people, and in the absence of such a man- 
date his judgment would be supreme. 

Mandates from the people would be rare under a 
christian democracy, for the legislators would have only 
one purpose, and that purpose would be to serve the 
people with the best judgment they could command. 

I want to repeat for emphasis that the first step to be 
taken in the building of a christian democracy must be 
the election of a legislature pledged to the submission 
of an amendment to the constitution of each state pro- 
viding for a unicameral legislative body. When this is 
accomplished the work of building the machinery of 
law-making would be simple. 

For a quarter of a century we have talked and legis- 
lated on the question of the initiative, referendum and 
recall. Every line that has been written and every law 
that has been passed has recognized the need for a pro- 
vision through which a nation might speak upon the 
laws that are passed as well as upon laws that the people 
want. Anything less than the power to speak takes 
from the people the power that must belong to them in 
a republic. Laws have been passed in many of the 
states of the Union denominated initiative and referen- 
dum laws, but in every state they have been so cumber- 
some, so expensive and so slow that they have seldom 
been invoked for the relief of the people except in in- 
stances of the most urgent need, yet ever}?- law that has 
ever been referred to the people has been a positive 
demonstration that the judgment of the people at the 
ballot-box is well nigh infallible. 



94 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

A republic without the machinery of initiating and 
referring laws to the people is absolutely impotent for 
its own protection. When political prejudice and party 
regularity are eliminated, few measures to be considered 
would divide any law-making body, but when political 
axes are to be ground and political regularity is to be 
considered, here lies the danger. 

The same machinery that will be used in the state, 
and in every political subdivision of the state, will be 
the machinery for a national referendum. In a descrip- 
tion, which must be very brief, we will try to make plain 
the machinery for a national referendum, and its appli- 
cation to the states and their political subdivisions. 

A National Referendum 

Every voting precinct in the United States would 
comprise a referendum district, and some central point 
in the precinct would be made a community center. 

In every referendum district a man or woman would 
be elected by the people in the district, and would serve 
under the title "Referendum Commissioner". 

The referendum commissioner would have charge of 
all public meetings, receive and advertise all questions 
for public consideration and discussion, preside at all 
community meetings, and with the aid of two other 
persons have charge of all referendum elections and 
petitions or referendum votes. 

The president of the United States, upon a proper 
petition from the several states, would submit the ques- 
tion proposed to the governor, who would immediately 
refer the same to every referendum commissioner. The 
call of the president would state the question for con- 
sideration, fix the dates between which the votes would 
be cast, and the votes when cast would be sent to the 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 95 

clerk of the county, who would immediately forward 
them to the secretary of state to be tabulated and for- 
warded to the president. 

On questions of great urgency the vote could be taken 
within thirty days of the date of notification by the 
president, but on questions of less urgency the date of 
voting might be fixed three or six months ahead, thus 
giving ample time for study of the question and for 
public discussion in the community centers, and wherever 
the public might want to call meetings. 

Think of it ! The mind of an entire nation centered 
upon a great question at the same time, and studying 
that question without a single purpose but to ascertain 
the vital truths as they relate to the mandate of a great 
people upon the question at issue. This would consti- 
tute the greatest problem-solving campaign that was 
ever set in motion in any nation on earth. Every school 
house and every church in the nation would open its 
doors to this greatest school that has ever devoted itself 
to the solution of the problems of the state. In those 
schools there would be no politicians. Not a single man 
would have a political ax to grind, but with the teach- 
ers, ministers, lawyers, merchants and laborers of the 
nation, the fundamental facts that relate to the question 
at issue would be discussed in a spirit of perfect cordial- 
ity and friendliness before the nation gave its verdict, 
and when that verdict was given the world would know 
the mind of this great nation. A great question has 
been considered. A verdict has been rendered. It has 
been recorded in the national capitol. Our law makers 
know the mind of the people of this nation whom they 
were elected to serve. 

Would they obey that mandate. They would. For 
behind the mandate would be that weapon, the recall, 



96 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

which could be invoked just as easily and with the same 
machinery as the referendum. 

Let us suppose that when our president sent the treaty 
of Versailles to the senate for ratification such a ref- 
erendum could have been taken. Is there a man in 
America who believes that the verdict of the people 
would have been for a refusal to ratify that treaty and 
League of Nations? 

But whether they refused or rejected it, is there a 
man or woman who is not willing to submit to the ver- 
dict of the majority, if that majority expressed the un- 
biased opinion of a great people after giving time, and 
having opportunity for a study of the question with the 
splendid opportunities such a school as we have out- 
lined would give for knowing the facts as they relate to 
the question at issue? 

Let us again view the possibilities of such a referen- 
dum. Only a few months ago this nation was disgraced 
by a fistic combat to exhibit to the world the power of 
brute force. Millions of dollars were worse than wasted 
under the pleas that American manhood was represented 
in that exhibition of power, that in nearly every city 
and state of the union had been prohibited by law. In- 
nocent boys in every city of the land were driven into 
an enthusiasm for America's champion by fascinating 
stories in the daily papers, and that enthusiasm was 
goaded on by the hope of financial gain through the 
sale of their "extras" after the fight had been decided. 
Could we get our congress to take action upon this 
question? You say no. Why not? A law could be 
passed within thirty days if there was no handicap, but 
the politicians would hesitate because no political party 
in its national convention had spoken against such ex- 
hibitions. If the question of a national prohibition of 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 97 

prize fighting were submitted in such a referendum as 
we have outlined would this nation not demand of our 
law makers in a mandate that would be heard and 
heeded from the lakes to the gulf and from the Pacific 
to the Atlantic that prize fighting in America shall be 
prohibited forever? In such a mandate America would 
speak in no uncertain language, but our congress under 
a system of government by party would find time for 
such legislation only, after a generation of agitation, if 
at all. But the people in this court of last resort would 
need only a day to render an emphatic verdict and re- 
move the possibility of a repetition of such a national 
disgrace as we have been obliged to apologize for within 
only a few months. 

A Presidential Primary 

The whole story is not yet told. The same machinery 
we have outlined for a national referendum would serve 
the people in the nominations of president and vice 
president and remove the possibility of another national 
disgrace such as we were obliged to apologize for in the 
nomination of candidates for president and vice presi- 
dent in the last election. The day in which there is ex- 
cuse for spending a barrel of money to secure the nomi- 
nation for the highest office in this nation has passed. 
Nothing could be more harmful, and more disgraceful, 
than a campaign such as we have tolerated in this coun- 
try for the last half century. The prejudices that are 
engendered in such a contest are stiffling to the moral 
sense of the nation. The date for a national primary 
should be fixed by law. On that date the voters of the 
nation would deposit their votes in the same manner as 
the votes were deposited in the referendum just out- 
lined on a previous page. The man who received the 



98 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

highest number of votes and the man who received the 
largest per cent of the votes in the largest per cent of 
the states in the union would be the two candidates at 
the November election for president, and the same would 
be true as to candidates for vice president. Should a 
tie vote in either case be cast, both candidates that tied 
would be declared candidates for the November election 
and the candidate receiving a plurality of the popular 
vote of the nation would be declared elected. 

In the same primary election the people would speak 
upon the several important national questions that would 
be submitted, and the mandate given by the majority of 
the votes would be the platform of the men nominated 
and elected upon the questions submitted. 

Initiative and Recall 

Everything that has been said in relation to the ref- 
erendum as to machinery would be effective for the 
initiation of any measure of legislation that the people 
desired. At this moment a question of national impor- 
tance is being urged upon our congress. It is the ques- 
tion of a national marriage and divorce law. I refer to 
this in this connection simply to emphasize the ease with 
which such a law might be made effective without the 
delays that are certain if we must depend upon political 
action. 

Much has been said in the last twenty-five years about 
the recall of our public servants. We do not care to 
enter into a discussion of the right of recall or of the 
wisdom of applying that right, but it must be said that 
the right of recall is simply the right to rule. The 
same power that elects must have the power to recall in 
a government of the people. If a representative, either 
in a legislature or in congress, fails to obey the man- 



GOVERNMENT BY PARTY 99 

dates of his constituents in the making of the laws, the 
people have the right, and it is their duty, to recall that 
servant without delay, and send men who will obey 
their will. Such a recall is contemplated iir our plan 
for a referendum, and its influence, even though it 
might never be invoked, would be salutary. 

Is further explanation needed? Such a referendum 
as we have outlined provides the machinery through 
which a nation can speak without the handicap of polit- 
ical prejudice. When we can eliminate the vile odors 
of graft, and misrepresentation, and abuse from our 
political system we can get every teacher from our 
public school, every minister of the gospel, every woman 
who is interested in the homes of this nation to take a 
part in this great school of problem solving, and then 
we could begin to realize what a government of the 
people, for the people, and by the people would mean 
to a really free people. The presidential primary would 
permit the people to name the men they wanted, instead 
of permitting them to be named by special groups for 
sinister purposes. We would then draft our public 
servants instead of permitting the great dailies to name 
a few men a year ahead, even for the less important 
offices and in that way arouse a sentiment for men 
pledged to special interests or against honorable men 
who can have no means of defense against such crim- 
inal offenses as are permitted at this time because by 
insinuation there attaches no liability under the law and 
the effect is more certain. 

Such a campaign will eliminate the chronic self- 
seeker for official honors, and holding of an office when 
a man is called to serve the people in this manner would 
indeed be a high honor. 

Think of it ! The intellectual and moral forces of a 



100 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

great nation, organized to speak as one man upon the 
vital questions of state, not from the standpoint of 
technical phraseology of the laws, not deciding every 
detail of treaty making, not dealing with the simpler 
questions of government directly, but with the power 
and the machinery for the study of the problems, and 
then the power to speak the voice of the wisdom so ac- 
quired in such a way as to make that voice heard in the 
halls of our law makers. 

Under such a christian democracy there would be no 
place and no excuse for the red flag of anarchy. The 
cries of socialism would be drowned in the enthusiasm 
for the new democracy. The doors of opportunity would 
again be opened for the great armies of men and women 
who labor. This great christian nation would find its 
place at the council table of the League of Nations, and 
its perfect law making machinery would serve as a 
model for other nations of the world. The people would 
insist upon disarmament as provided by the League of 
Nations, and the battleships of this republic would give 
place to great merchantmen that would go scouting to 
every clime bearing the fruits of this nation of plenty 
to bless the starving peoples of other lands. This gov- 
ernment would then be able to institute a program of 
home building that would mean that homes would be 
provided or be made possible for the millions that today 
are crushed under the heel of an autocracy of wealth 
that is galling to American freemen. 

All hail America! The great toiling masses of the 
common people, the men and women who have been the 
hope of the nation, and the bulwark of American life; 
they who have built its cities and its railroads, fought 
its battles, paid its taxes, and changed its virgin soils 
into fertile fields, once again on the throne, and the 
power of political parties forever on the scaffold. 



COMPETITION 101 

Chapter VII 
COMPETITION 

Political economy as a science has been the football of 
every decade of political evolution. 

Adam Smith, only two centuries ago, revolutionized 
the economic thought of England and the world, and 
entirely altered the attitude of governmints toward eco- 
nomic problems. He was free from many of the faults 
of the earlier political economists. He has been called 
the father of economics, and many thought that from 
his brain had sprung the whole of political science full 
grown and fully armed, but the evolutions of every 
generation have proved the falacy of one and another 
of his doctrines, until the world must now admit that 
the doctrines he taught only paved the way for a new 
era of investigation by playing havoc with old preju- 
dices. 

The mind of the whole world has ever been at enmity 
with innovations. It has always been slow to accept 
the new and to discard the old. 

Political economy, whether it be expounded by Hume, 
Eicardo, Mills or Smith, is simply the evolution of prin- 
ciples of government applied to the conditions of society 
at a given era of human history. Economic laws are 
relative, not absolute. 

When those old economists preached with such vehe- 
mence the doctrines of competition, they had never 
dreamed of the power of organization in the commercial 
world. When they reasoned with such logic about the 
principles of free trade and tariffs, they had never had 
a vision of a world so intimately associated commer- 



102 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

cially as are the nations of the world today. When 
Smith wrote his wonderful book on the Wealth of Na- 
tions he had never dreamed of the ultimate relations 
that in this country have come to shape the destinies of 
the world, and so as I come to consider the question of 
competition I must take into account the progress of 
civilization, with all its changing laws of economics as 
they are forcing the modern solution of the many per- 
plexing questions of this new age. 

We are beginning to understand that not all that has 
been built by our forefathers has been right, and even 
in the things that have seemed right, we have drifted 
away from the truths that should have remained as the 
foundation of the great economic structure, because our 
premises were wrong from the beginning. 

If you asked me to name some of the inequalities of 
man's struggle in life, I would point to the one that 
seemed to me to be the fountain of more real misery in 
the human family than all else, when I charge a large 
share of it to our competitive system. 

From our earliest childhood we have been taught that 
God established the competitive system in all his crea- 
tion, and that the only fair deduction possible from this 
well-established creation is the law of the "survival of 
the fittest". This theory of creation is pointed out as an 
argument against co-operation. 

It is true that in all the material creation this doc- 
trine seems to be the law of God. Herbiverous creation 
lives and thrives, only to offer its life upon the sacri- 
ficial altar of God's carniverous creation. The lion's 
very existence is the lamb's destruction. His ferocity is 
increased as his efforts to satisfy his God-given appetite 
are thwarted. This is his only road to life, and in the 
whole animal creation this law is written with the stamp 



COMPETITION 10S 

of God's approval. This is the strife of beasts, but does 
it follow that the law of competition should be the law 
of life ? Are we, who have been created in the image of 
God, and given dominion over every living thing, des- 
tined to work out the problems of the human race on the 
theory that we are mere animals, and held only to ac- 
count to God for lives measured by the laws laid down 
for the beasts of the field? 

In the world of business we have been taught that 
competition is the life of trade, but the civilization of 
this century is analyzing this doctrine, and asking the 
question, "Is the strife of beasts as it is laid down in 
nature for their existence to be the law of God as to the 
rights of life between God's children?" 

Competition has always meant that the strong won 
the prize and the weak lost, but this again is the strife 
of beasts. In it there is not an element of man's nature, 
except as man is originally a beast of the field. 

Is there any reason why I, being physically strong, 
should take the prizes of life as they are given for man's 
existence, while my brother who is physically weak, 
must perish for the want of the things God has given 
simply because I am strong and he is weak? Over 
yonder is a coveted prize. It is a gift of God to man- 
kind. Possession gives the right to ownership. Ten 
men flee in pursuit only to find that one, fleeter than 
they, had possessed the prize long before their weary 
feet had reached the spot. By this law of the beasts of 
the field the one who needed the prize least of all had 
won, and success to him meant failure to all the others. 

God never intended that the competition of the ani- 
mal kingdom should be the law of the children of men. 
Recognize in nature the law of competitive strife as you 
may, down deep in your heart you must admit that, 



104 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

measured by every law of economic justice, and by every 
instinct of christian ethics, competition appeals to the 
animal, and robs man of his higher nature. 

Ever since the world began the prizes of competitive 
strife have been the goal of life. It has bred into man's 
very nature the greed that the animal instinct had al- 
ready made strong. This instinct for selfish gain has 
been handed down from parent to child until his infant 
mind is strong alone in its natural endowment to grasp 
for worldly goods. 

Psychologists tell us that maternity has the power to 
bestow upon the offspring the predominant character- 
istics of the parent, and that the wonderful natural en- 
dowment of great musicians, artists and mathematicians 
have been the product of pre natal conditions. They 
also tell us that by a study of these conditions the up- 
lift of the human family might be effected. No doubt 
this is at least to some extent true, and if it were, then 
would it be unreasonable to conclude that since from 
the beginning of the world the one object of man's life 
has been the acquisition of wealth, he has handed down 
from generation to generation this one all-absorbing de- 
sire, until he has made the mind stronger in this than 
in its other natural endowment? Have you not noted 
how from infancy this animal instinct seems to predomi- 
nate over every other instinct of the mind? Is this in- 
stint natural? If it is, we conclude that it is, only as it 
typifies the natural man — the animal. Again, is this in- 
stinct developed more in the later generations of men? 
No doubt it is. They tell us that the power to accumu- 
late wealth is God-given. Whether it is or not, it is a 
development of man's mental capacity, and strong as is 
this selfish desire stamped upon the human family, and 
necessary as it has been to his very existence, we can 



COMPETITION 105 

only wonder that it is not stronger rather than weaker 
than it is. 

Individualists tell us that competition is necessary to 
a. healthy development of man's mind, and that without 
competition the world would soon become a mass of 
sluggards, without energy and thrift. Let us see. Does 
competition ever effect the farmer as he produces his 
crop? He sows in the springtime, he fights the battles 
against his natural enemies during the summer, and in 
the autumn he gathers his crop, without in the least way 
coming into competition with his neighbor. From the 
hand of God to the lap of man, the only strife, the only 
struggle is between man and his natural enemies, thorns, 
thistles, weeds, frost, hail and drought. When he has 
met and overcome all these enemies the bounty of God 
is measured by His inexorable laws of nature. Com- 
petition has no place in God's economics, except as 
God's creatures in the native wild prey upon one an- 
other for their very life. 

Where then does competition originate as it applies to 
human affairs? It originates with the birth of trade 
and sale for profit. Its evil influences were not felt in 
the world of commercial transactions until a large part 
of the property was individually owned. Competition 
as it exists in the commercial world is not a creation of 
God, but a creation of the evil one, and when the world 
comes into its own, when it has written into the laws 
of the land and into the lives of the people the answer 
to that question that has come ringing down through 
all the generations of men to the present time, that ques- 
tion that has never been answered in ethic, or in church 
relations, or in the law, "Am I my brother's keeper"? 
then indeed may we hope that the righteousness of God 
will be established among men. 



106 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

What does competition mean in business? It means 
that the success of one must be the failure of the other. 
This law is inevitable. In a community of divided busi- 
ness, if your competitor gets more, you must get less of 
the business in the lines you carry. 

They used to tell us that competition lowered prices, 
but have we not seen many times that competition low- 
ered prices to a point where business was done at a loss? 
And have you not seen failure where success should 
have rewarded honest effort? 

We hear men talk about "honest competition". What 
is "honest competition", as we apply it to the world of 
business? Is it honest effort to win in the race for 
wealth? Would failure be less humiliating if your 
competitor employed what the world calls "honest com- 
petition" to put you out of business? 

In the business world, competition is a race, a war, a 
contest, in which only one can win. Your success means 
your brother's failure, and his success means your 
failure. You have invested all you have in a business. 
It is a matter of life whether you succeed or fail. Your 
competitor has the advantage of 3 7 ou. His location is 
better. He is young, energetic, a live business man. 
You see your trade going from you day by day. You 
have bought goods on the reasonable expectation of your 
old-time trade. Your goods at the end of the year lie 
on your shelves, while your competitor is mail- ordering 
the very things you have in stock. Your bills come due, 
and the money wifh which you expected to pay them is 
in the unsold goods upon your shelves. In desperation 
you struggle to keep your head above what the world 
calls a wave of "honest competition". You are en- 
gulfed. You hear the heartbreaking sound of the last 
"Sold" as the sheriff closes out the earnings of a life to 



COMPETITION 107 

pay the price competition has demanded of you in pay- 
ment of your part toward the keeping up of that glori- 
ous system of competition upon which half the world 
has fattened and the other half has starved since the 
beginning of time. 

Is there in the commercial world today such a thing 
as "honest competition"? Let us suppose that competi- 
tion may be honest. Is there an element of christian 
fellowship in this war of business? Let us see. James 
and John are brothers of the same church. They are 
competitors in the same business. There is just so much 
business in the line they carry, and each is in need of 
more than there seems to be. John has a large family 
dependent upon him for support. He has many cares 
and cannot solicit as urgently as James. James is ener- 
getic. He visits prospective customers before and after 
work hours. Again and again John finds that James 
has secured the job ahead of him. As winter ap- 
proaches, he realizes that his idle days have told upon 
his business. James has outstripped him in the com- 
petitive race. The competition may have been honest 
after the rules of the game, but without fault, John and 
his innocent family have suffered because of it. Next 
year John will apply a different rule. He will cut 
prices. He will work nights. He will underbid to get 
the job. He will give a cent a bushel more for the 
grain at the elevator and then short-weight the seller 
to protect himself from loss. This is the legitimate fruit 
of competition. It has ruined many a good man in 
business. It has made criminals of otherwise honest 
men. It has filled our jails with its victims and our 
asylums with its unfortunates. The people have winked 
at it and called it by another name. 

These are some of the inevitable results of what we 



108 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

have called "honest competition", but what must we say 
when men in their desperation abandon the rules of 
honesty ? 

A good old-fashioned tradesman sold meat over the 
same counter for forty years in his little country towm 
Here he bought the flower of the farmers' flocks, slaugh- 
tered them in his own slaughter house, and sold them 
to his neighbors at a living profit. On an evil day or- 
ganized capital in the shape of the so-called "meat 
trust" put in a shop alongside our old-fashioned friend, 
and began a system of "honest competition". The old 
man said, "Let him alone. I have sold my neighbors 
meat for forty years, and they are satisfied with the 
treatment I have given them". But prices suddenly 
dropped, and the old man was obliged to meet competi- 
tion. He met it, and in a short time he was obliged to 
close his shop. His old customers bought where they 
could buy the cheapest and the trust sold at a loss to get 
the old man out of business. It made at other points 
what it lost at this while they were putting the old man 
out, and the moment they had all the trade, prices went 
back to the profit point. 

This is the modern application of the competitive 
principle, and this modern application is the new con- 
dition that has confronted the business world for a 
number of years. While the people were still applaud- 
ing the merits of the competitive system, wise business 
men had learned a thing or two. They recognized that 
competition meant ruin to someone, and that ruin al- 
ways fell upon the man least able to suffer from its cer- 
tain disaster. Competition may be well enough, they 
said, for the small business, but organized capital can- 
not risk the hazards of such a system. 

This awakening came only two generations ago, and 



COMPETITION 199 

we are forced today to acknowledge that in all the en- 
terprises requiring large capital, co-operation or com- 
bination have taken the place of the old system of war 
and ruin. They will frankly tell you that they sought 
this new order as a shelter from the awful war of com- 
petition that the}^ were obliged to face in the commer- 
cial world. 

The people are beginning to understand what co- 
operation means, not to the men who co-operate alone, 
but to the men on the other side of the counter. Profits 
are increased, and products limited to the demands of 
trade. 

These large combinations of capital are commonly 
called trusts, but the new order is not confined to large 
capital, for in nearly every line of human endeavor 
competition is a thing of the past. 

The power of these large organizations during the 
few years of their existence has grown until it is incal- 
culable. It is their business to gather where others have 
sown, and to do this they have perfected an organiza- 
tion, and a system of exploitation that for working 
efficiency is the admiration of the profoundest students 
of the age. 

It is claimed by the friends of the trusts that they 
will bring economy of operation, and through this econ- 
omy the people will benefit by lowered prices. It is 
conceded that these results should follow, but they are 
only incident to the controlling objects of such associa- 
tions of capital. Trusts are formed to make money. 
Control of any line of business gives them mastery and 
makes it possible for them to dictate the price to the 
producer of the raw material as well as to the consumer 
of the finished product. They hold the power to limit 
the product as well as the price of the raw material, 



110 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

drive the purchaser to a single market and then, 
prompted by insatiate avarice, they increase the price to 
the consumer, and thus complete the circle of their 
depredations. 

The golden rule of life never finds a place in our com- 
petitive system, but bad as it has been, the insatiate 
greed of organized capital in the present day trusts of 
the commercial world is a greater menace to the welfare 
of the people than competition has ever been. Com- 
petition has indeed been a war of business, but in that 
war one-half of the people shared the spoils, while 
under our trust system all the people are in one way or 
another the victims of their threats, their intimidations, 
their bribery, their frauds, and of their wreck and pil- 
lage. They close mines and mills and factories at will, 
without regard to the welfare of the community in which 
they are established, and without regard to the rights of 
property owners who have risked their all upon the 
prospects of business. 

The profits of these trusts are simply appalling. The 
sugar trust has the power to levy tribute of $40,000,000 
upon the people of this country by simply advancing 
the price of sugar one cent a pound for one year. When 
the people rebel, and threaten legislation in restraint of 
these depredations, they extort campaign expenses and 
corruption funds by advancing prices, thus forcing the 
multitude of honest consumers to furnish the sinews of 
war for their own destruction. They not only have the 
power to do these things from year to year, but they do 
them, and the worst feature of the wrong is in the fact 
that they control the very articles which the great 
masses of the people consume in their daily life. 

It has all the time been clear to the people that the 
trusts are contrary to public policy in their management 



COMPETITION 111 

and in conflict with the common law of the land. Courts 
have again and again so declared them, but in spite of 
the clamor of the people, and in spite of the courts, they 
have multiplied, until at this time competition in all the 
leading lines of commercial transactions is a thing of the 
past. 

Standard Oil has led the way in the conquest of the 
commercial world, and its combination reaches, in an 
organized way, every important country of the earth, 
thus placing all .mankind at its mercy. Since this is 
true, what is to stand in the way of every other branch 
of business accomplishing the same end? 

But what of the future? Prohibitive legislation has 
thus far been unavailing. Experience has taught us 
that for gain men will openly violate the moral law, 
infringe upon the promised rights of their brothers and 
refuse to be restrained by the most stringent prohibitive 
measures. 

It is urged by the friends of "Big Business" that in 
this country of vast enterprises the great volume of 
business can only be done by large organizations of 
capital. Assuming that this is true, and assuming also 
that in well organized and economically managed con- 
cerns with unlimited capital there is great economy in 
the production as well as in the distribution of the 
necessities of the people, but we cannot help the convic- 
tion that we can ill afford to trust the management of 
such vast enterprises in the hands of the few individuals 
whose selfish interest would be furthered by harsh 
measures and methods. The trusts may be here to stay, 
but if they are, the people must in one way or another 
get absolute control of them. If control cannot be had 
in any other way, then the people will have only one 
remedy left, and that remedy will be public ownership. 



112 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

The trusts and their methods of doing business have 
been great teachers. We have learned lessons that will 
prove valuable to us. We never before knew and felt 
the real power of organization, but we are beginning to 
understand their strength. The battle is on. The ques- 
tion, "Shall man or the dollar rule in this county?" 
will furnish the slogan of war. The people will wel- 
come the conflict. The despoilers of homes must be 
robbed of their power, even if the very earth must 
tremble by the displacement. That destroyer of every- 
thing but greed in the human heart must go, and with it 
every combination of men and money that does not leave 
with the people who toil every cent above a fair profit. 
Money, and its influence in the commercial world to 
drive small competitors out of business, must be shorn 
of its power, and this land of liberty and opportunity 
must reclaim for its citizens the rights of which they 
have been robbed by special privilege. 

Not to the strong alone, either physically or intellec- 
tually, shall the battle be in twentieth century civiliza- 
tion. Not to the "fittest" shall be given the right to rule 
under the old definitions, nor shall they enjoy the 
special privileges of exploiting the weaker members of 
society, for the sons of toil are fixing new rules for the 
conduct of men in life, and in business, and in politics, 
and in religion. These new rules will embody the doc- 
trines of the Prince of Peace and enact them into law. 
The righteousness of the new laws will be judged by a 
new code of morals. The people will look beyond the 
law to the finished product. Tf under the new law's 
operation unrequitted toil shall bend the backs of labor 
until their cries of discontent and anguish shall reach 
Heaven, then the law will be adjudged bad. If poverty 
and want shall stalk broadcast in a land of plenty, we 



COMPETITION US 

will change the law. If idleness shall thrive alongside 
millions who struggle for their daily bread, we will 
blame the law that permits it. If organized greed in 
any form shall pile up millions of wealth to defy the 
law and exploit labor by robbing it of its just share of 
earnings, the law will be adjudged bad, and the people 
will so amend it as to bring the answer of a righteous 
law in righteous conditions. 

But how may this be accomplished? Let us assume 
that the trust and every form of non- competitive busi- 
ness is a necessity of our modern civilization. Competi- 
tion is cruel and unchristian. The law of the "Survial 
of the Fittest" is a relic of the past. It will have no 
place in the business of our new civilization. The trusts, 
in every form in which in any measure they control 
prices, must be operated for and by the people. Do not 
turn a deaf ear to this solution of a question that, un- 
solved, threatens the very life of our government. Yiity 
years ago a cry went up for protection for America's 
infant industries. We extended the protection asked in 
the belief and with the promise that such protection was 
in the interests of labor and low prices. The protected 
industries grew and waxed strong under the paternal 
care of the government's policy of protection. Labor 
cried out against a protection that left the laborers to 
grope helplessly in the open competitive market for the 
work that our own people claimed as their right. Labor 
had no protection. It has ever faced the cruel war of 
competition, and battled against the underpaid labor of 
foreign lands. The trust of today is the finished pro- 
duct of protection. Competition is not a factor in the 
fixing of the price. We witness today the giant pro- 
tected industries of the nation threatening political par- 
ties, that by those threats they may force the raising of 



Ilk BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

tariff rates, while unprotected labor begs for bread, and 
thousands of mothers and children eke out an existence 
from the pittance they earn in the factories of our gov- 
ernment-made captains of industry. The mansion on 
the hill and the hovel in the valley are the finished 
product of price, and the price that built the mansion, 
and the price that built the hovel, as well as the forced 
right to live in it, was fixed by the same authority with 
the threat of a thousand hungry men and women ready 
to take the job if the price was rejected. 

Lloyd George, England's great Commoner, has writ- 
ten into the laws of that nation a minimum wage. Is 
the authority thus assumed unwarranted? Does it seem 
unreasonable that this government should protect our 
helpless laborers by fixing a minimum wage? Who is 
ready to say that this is unjust, and who is ready to 
say that we have overstepped the authority of our time- 
honored constitution? What about this old time-hon- 
ored constitution, anyway? It was made more than a 
hundred years ago to fit a nation in its swaddling 
clothes. It was made to meet the new and untried con- 
dition of life. It was made to secure to the people 
rights never enjoyed by any other nation on earth. It 
is our constitution and we have changed it nineteen 
times. Will anyone wonder that it has needed changes? 
It is our right, it is our duty, to enlarge its authority to 
meet every new condition that our new civilization de- 
mands. Has any American failed to revere that con- 
stitution and the wise men who gave it to us ? Had they 
not been inspired by a burning love for humanity, the 
finished product of their efforts would never have pre- 
sented to the world the most complete and exhaustive 
bill of rights that the people of any country of any age 
had previously enjoyed. 



COMPETITION 115 

We talk about the trusts that are today exploiting 
the labor of the nation as well as the consumers of the 
products of that labor. We talk about the unsolved 
problem of the labor of the nation. We philosophize 
on the great struggle between capital and labor. We 
ask the question that has never been answered to the 
satisfaction of the thinking world, who fixes the price 
of things? We explain how national money panics are 
brewed over night, and then we understand something 
of the power of the men who can in a day divide the 
value of every dollars worth of the property of the na- 
tion by two and in the doing of this double the value of 
every promise for future payment represented by notes, 
and bonds, and taxes, and mortgages in the land. The 
power to name the price, and the power to control the 
money of a country is a greater power than any sov- 
ereign on earth ever enjoyed. The people are wonder- 
ing by just what mathematical computation the fixers 
of price arrive at the answer. 

They tell us that the sugar trust ascertains the amount 
of sugar necessary to supply the demands of the people 
for a year, and then after ascertaining the amount pro- 
duced and adding to the price they paid the profit they 
demand, the price to the public for each month of the 
year is fixed f. o. b. New York, and the price to all re- 
tailers is New York price, plus the freight to his sta- 
tion. How easy and simple. But the sugar trust owns 
the factory, and fixes the price of the beets, and the 
cane, and the labor. 

Who can solve the problem of price? Who knows 
what the price of a bushel of wheat, or corn, or the price 
of a pound of beef or pork should be? Can the pro- 
ducers of these necessities of life depend upon the prin- 
ciples of competition and of supply and demand to 



116 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

bring to the world a just solution to the question of a 
just price? 

There is not an intelligent man in America who would 
not promptly answer, No. What, then, is the remedy? 
The remedy for these awful wrongs is to be found in a 
system of standardization from the labor that enters 
into the value of every product to the finished product 
in the commercial world. As long as this nation permits 
by law the power to continue to fix prices, just so long 
a few men will be able to obstruct the flow of the 
products of toil on their way from the farms and the 
factories to the millions of people whose very lives must 
depend upon them to keep that demon of hunger and 
starvation from the home. 

In another chapter we have more fully elucidated this 
power in the world, and the remedies for the wrongs 
that seem so threatening. 

Is anybody trying to solve this complex problem? 
Are our schools bringing the problem to the attention 
of the young men and women of the country? 

Let no man underestimate the importance of some 
righteous solution to these questions and to the impor- 
tance of bringing that solution at the first moment pos- 
sible. 



ARBITRATION 111 



Chapter VIII 

ARBITRATION 

Nowhere in our complex civilization have we built 
without regard for the more fundamental rights of our 
citizens than in the system of jurisprudence that today 
is settling the disputes of the world. 

Since the days of Adam man's associations have been 
the source of misunderstandings and disputes. Cain and 
Abel settled the first dispute recorded in human history 
by the arbitrament of physical force, and for centuries, 
and indeed until recently, that force has been employed 
in the settlement of disputes of individuals as well as 
nations. 

Law has fixed the rules of life among men, and new 
modes of adjusting their contentions. 

In the jurisprudence of every law-governed country 
is indelibly impressed the fundamental doctrine of hu- 
man rights, but back of the written law of nations is 
the common law of the world based solely upon men's 
individual rights. 

No student of fundamental law has failed to discern 
how studiously the old time-honored jurists made every 
decision of the court bend to the idea of human rights, 
but the evolution of modern society, with its demands 
for new laws, has written into the jurisprudence of our 
times new measures by which men's rights are ascer- 
tained. The old jurists indeed sat in judgment over 
questions of human rights, but the jurists of our genera- 
tion determine or measure these rights by the rules of 
law alone. Men ask in this age of commercialism, "Is 
it lawful?" and not "Is it right?" 



118 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

By this measure we have come to judge the world's 
transactions. Not from choice we have written into the 
supreme law of the land decisions based upon the law as 
it is written in the statutes, with only small regard for 
the more fundamental doctrines of human rights. 

We blush as we record this statement, because the 
laws of our country are primarily intended to secure to 
the individual the greatest possible share of men's in- 
herent rights. 

Well do we know that the learned jurists of our 
country will deny that men's rights under the laws are 
held paramount to their rights under the moral law, 
but no matter how strenuously the fact may be denied, 
the world knows that the judge on the bench is sworn 
to render his decision between men purely on the ques- 
tion of law. If a man goes into court, he places himself 
in the hands of the law, and the court has no choice but 
to render a decision on the cold proposition of the 
written law on the point involved. 

Courts have been established to administer the laws 
of the land; courts, whose jurisdiction reaches from the 
smallest matter, to the question that may be heard in 
the highest appellate court of the land, but the people 
must know that a large per cent of the litigation in the 
country is due to a lack of knowledge of the laws rather 
than a disposition to disobey them. 

Do you wonder that this is true ? The courts hold that 
ignorance of the law excuses no man from obeying it, or 
for not paying the penalty for disobedience ? This hold- 
ing is never disputed, but we ask what opportunity 
have the people had of knowing the law? In every 
state we find that there is only one printed copy of the 
law to every two or three thousand people, and perhaps 
not more than five per cent of the population of any 



ARBITRATION 119 

state has ever had opportunity even to see a copy of the 
statutes of the state in which he lives. 

Laws are rules of conduct. Would you expect a man 
to obey a rule he did not know? We speak of this to 
emphasize that a large per cent of the people live a 
whole lifetime, and do all their business without any 
serious knowledge of the law, and act wholly upon a 
moral code of right that has prevailed among men since 
the early days of organized society. 

When a man finds that his moral code comes in con- 
flict with the statutes of the state, he must face the 
statutes as they are laid down in the law, and if his 
conduct has conflicted with that law, no matter what 
his moral code may say, he must abide the decision on 
the law, right or wrong, no matter whether he was wise 
or ignorant of its provisions. 

We do not insist that a man should not be amenable 
to the law of the land whether he knows the law or not, 
but every fair-minded man will agree that opportunity 
to know the laws should be easily accessible to every 
subject of the government, every man and woman who 
is expected to obey them, and thus the hardship of re- 
quiring obedience to the laws of which the people are 
ignorant would be removed. 

But we must not forget that the courts are the final 
arbiters of all questions wherein the laws have been vio- 
lated, whether it be a criminal offense or a cause for a 
civil action. Criminal offenses can only be dealt with 
by the stern processes of the law, but civil actions, or 
disputes between man and man, and between men and 
corporations, can become questions for arbitration. 

You will ask, Why arbitrate? Are not the processes 
of the law quite as effective in the settlement of disputes 
among men as arbitration could be? To this question 



120 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

we must reply in the negative. There are mam 7 reasons 
why arbitration among men is better than the processes 
of law as it is applied in our courts. The law is slow in 
its processes of administration of justice. It is common 
knowledge that litigants are worn out by the law's de- 
lays. A man may have a case ever so urgent and just, 
and by the law's delay alone he will be driven to aban- 
don a just cause of action, and suffer the loss of every 
dollar involved, rather than take the chance of a long 
drawn out litigation. Attorneys pursue a policy of de- 
lay in the courts, and the courts permit it, until prudent 
judgment is dictating to honest litigants that it is better 
to abandon their rights than to submit to an application 
of the law that permits legal piracy to use the law's 
delays to avoid the payment of just obligation. 

Then again it must be said that our present applica- 
tion of the law, with its technical rulings, makes a law- 
suit more a test of the skill of attorneys than a test of 
the rights of litigants. Who will deny that this is true? 
If you have failed to understand this vital fact, go into 
court and observe how helpless a poorly equipped attor- 
ney is against the technical tactics of one skilled in the 
sharp practices that prevail today. Who has not been a 
victim of this monstrous wrong, and who will not admit 
that in a large per cent of the cases the rights of liti- 
gants are lost sight of, and the skill of the attorneys is 
the basis of the final judgment in the case? 

We make the charge that in the application of the 
laws, courts must necessarily ignore questions of right 
between parties, or subordinate them to the technical 
questions of the law. We do not complain of this, but 
make note of it simply that the reader may get the 
thought as we understand it for the purpose of future 
reference, and that the remedy may be better under- 
stood. 



ARBITRATION 121 

We boast of our policy of protection of property 
rights by law, but we forget that through the applica- 
tion of the laws we are every day using the law as a 
means of acquiring property in defiance of the rights of 
our neighbors. So true is this statement that there has 
grown up in the business world a practice that permits 
and excuses the acquiring of property by the rule of the 
law alone, and we wink at methods of gathering to our- 
selves wealth by these processes so long as we are within 
the pale of the law and keep out of the penitentiary. 

But there has grown up other abuses under our sys- 
tem of applying law that must be mentioned. I refer 
to the jury system of which we have so much boasted. 
It sounds well to be promised the right of a trial by a 
jury of twelve good and lawful men — our peers — but 
when we learn that the qualifying of the men who are 
competent to sit on the jury in the trial of cases that 
have gained prominence in the public prints are such 
as to stamp them as the least fit to understand the rights 
of parties, either under the laws of the state, or under 
the moral law, we lose faith in our time-honored jury 
system. 

Then when we hear of the bribery of jurors, and 
when we know that in the selection of every panel for 
the trial of a cause in court men's personal prejudices 
are weighed, not by the court, but by the attorneys on 
either side of the contention, and those are allowed to 
sit whose known prejudices are either favorable or un- 
favorable to any given contention, we simply stop and 
inquire what this might mean. In the selection of a 
jury this is true no matter that the opposing attorney 
has an equal chance to place men of his liking and 
prejudices upon the jury when we know that the sheriff 
as he calls talesmen can place in the jury box men 



122 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

whose known prejudices are favorable to any contention 
that he may see fit for any cause to espouse. No court 
will deny that this is true, or that a sheriff may have 
the power in the selection of a jury when the regular 
panel is exhausted to influence the selection of that jury 
favorable in their known prejudices to any given con- 
tention, and if this be true, a trial before a jury is a 
farce. 

Much has been said in the public print about "court 
fixing," so much indeed that the people are ready to 
criticise the court the moment the decision is adverse to 
their opinion, even though they heard not a single word 
of the evidence in the case. 

Court fixing and jury fixing, either by direct bribery 
or by procuring a prejudiced jury, or by the hiring one 
man to block the finding of a verdict, has become so 
common that the courts have lost much of that time- 
honored veneration among the people that should char- 
acterize a tribunal of justice. Not this alone. It has 
come to be a commonly accepted fact that a man with 
money has a distinct advantage of the poor man before 
our courts. This is a dangerous criticism, and yet no 
man can be found who will deny that there are reasons 
for such criticisms of our courts. As long as the people 
can point to cases where rich and influential men con- 
victed of wrecking banks and of wrecking whole com- 
munities through the manipulations of corporation or- 
ganizations and stock juggling can secure complete par- 
don for these outrages upon a trusting people, while a 
poor man who stole a ham for his starving family must 
suffer the penalty of the law, there is something radically 
wrong with the application of the laws. 

Our courts are our legal tribunals of justice. To 
them we must look for the trial of men charged with 



ARBITRATION 123 

high crimes. Here the judge must not forget that in 
his public capacity he owes a duty to the public which 
he serves that far transcends the mere finding of a judg- 
ment and the punishment of criminals. The infliction 
of the penalty of the law upon a culprit should serve 
a two fold purpose, first, the punishment of the crim- 
inal, and at the same time the reformation of the man, 
and secondary to these objects, we must not lose sight 
of the restraining effect of punishment upon the public 
mind in the deterring of those who might be ready to 
commit some other offense. The majesty of the law 
must be made so appealing that the people will come to 
know that, great or small, rich or poor, every citizen 
must stand before that court with no other power or in- 
fluence than every other citizen. 

Courts must not expect to enjoy the confidence of the 
people as long as they permit delays in administering 
justice until the winning party as well as the man who 
loses in the contention must both be losers by the litiga- 
tion. Criticisms of the courts are so common every- 
where, and the justice of many of those criticisms seem 
so well founded that we sometimes stop in our inquiry 
to ask ourselves, "What is to be the remedy?" The courts 
of our county are intended to be the shelter and shield 
of our liberties and our personal rights. We never ap- 
peal to them unless our rights or our liberties have been 
infringed. Under their oath of office every court must 
swear allegiance to our constitution and our laws made 
under it. Their business is the interpretation of those 
laws. Behind the constitution of our country stands 
that great constitution of the world written by the finger 
of God upon the tables of stone, and proclaimed by 
Moses the great law giver from Mount Sinai. Behind 
the statutes of our several states is the golden rule of 



124 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

life, given by the Christ to the world as the law of 
Christian brotherhood. Written in the hearts of man as 
the basis of all human law are the constitution and the 
golden rule of life, and the people demand that every 
interpretation of both the constitution and the law shall 
draw its inspiration of wisdom from that eternal law of 
truth from whence they came. The judge who fails to 
draw from that fountain in the interpretation of the 
laws loses sight of the underlying principle of human 
rights as defined by human law, and renders his opin- 
ions subject to just criticism. The law that fixes rules 
in conflict, or without regard to these inspired interpre- 
tations of human rights and duties is based upon the 
purely commercial and worldly side, and has no place in 
the statutes of states, or in the hearts and lives of the 
people. 

Boldly do we proclaim that the law and its interpre- 
tation has lost sight of the golden rule of life. By a 
thousand tests we can verify the statement that by de- 
sign, laws have been placed upon our statutes every- 
where for no other purpose than for the protection of 
special interests. By evidence that brooks no denial we 
know that the same special interests that secured the 
passage of laws for their protection also secured the 
election of judges, who either from one motive or an- 
other would give a friendly interpretation of the laws 
thus passed in the interests of these favored classes. 

No man who is acquainted with our code of legal pro- 
ceedings will deny that through the law's delays it is 
abortive of justice. Nor will any man gainsay that a 
case at bar is a test of the ability of lawyers rather 
than a trial of the rights of the parties. 

What a splendid privilege do we enjoy in our consti- 
tutional right to a trial of our cause in the highest 



ARBITRATION 125 

tribunal of the land! Do the people know just what 
this privilege is costing them in both money and time? 
To understand this, follow a case from the justice to the 
supreme court of }^our state. To begin an action in the 
justice court the amount must be less than $200. You 
must employ an attorney whether you lose or win. If 
the cause is appealed you must wait the sitting of the 
next term of the district court, where you are very 
likely to wait a year while your evidence is either being 
obliterated or scattered over the country out of reach. 
When you finally get your trial and you decide to ap- 
peal to the supreme court of your state, you will find 
that your costs have reached an enormous sum. The 
case need not reach the supreme court if the party ap- 
pealing so wishes, for one year, and when it does get 
there, in many of the states, the final decision would 
not be reached and handed down under two years, and 
not then unless it was urged by the adverse party. To 
get a case ready for the supreme court the appealing 
party must not only have a complete printed abstract 
of the evidence in the lower court, but he must produce 
in the court a complete printed brief of the arguments 
he wishes to make before that court. When a case is 
once lodged in that august body we call the supreme 
court, no matter how urgently your rights demand a 
speedy hearing, you may as well go home and forget 
that you have a case in court. Your frame of mind may 
not be the best, but you must reflect before you criticise 
our system of enforcing justice. You must not ask how 
many months the court is in session during the year, 
nor how many days of those months they are in session 
for business. You must not expect them to work eleven 
months and have only one month for a vacation, and 
you must not expect them to work as many hours a dav 



126 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

as you work out on your farm. Overworked! Yes, 
many months behind, and increased courts, until the 
judges themselves find difficulty in finding decisions that 
will not be in conflict with decisions that were written 
only a year ago. 

Your decision is finally handed down and you have 
lost, not because your case was not just, but because your 
attorney had failed to protect your rights in some tech- 
nical point that was as foreign to the issues of right as 
the fall of Rome was to the building of the Panama 
Canal. 

Well may the people ask, "What is the mission of our 
courts?" The answer to that question can only be, "The 
mission of our courts is to render just judgments be- 
tween litigants," but this answer brings the question, 
"Are the courts fulfilling their mission in the govern- 
ment?" 

Before answering this question I want to confess to 
a profound regard for a large majority of the noble 
jurists that have honored the bench, as well as that 
honorable body of men known as the legal profession, 
but when I assert that a large per cent of the judgments 
on the dockets of the courts of this country have found 
their way to judgment in absolute defiance of the laws, 
or the laws of right as measured by the golden rule of 
life, I assert a truth that will not be disputed by any 
judge or attorney. When I assert that all the judg- 
ments rendered in the lower courts in a year will rarely 
if ever amount to as much as the cost of securing them, 
I have stated a fact that the records themselves will 
prove. When I assert that the law's delays, and the 
proverbial uncertainty of bringing a just judgment as 
well as the attendant costs of prosecuting the case in the 
courts to obtain justice is driving men to tolerate grave 



ARBITRATION 127 

wrongs rather than to apply to the courts for redress of 
their grievances, I am stating what men everywhere 
recognize as a fact. 

What, then, is the matter with our time-honored sys- 
tem of jurisprudence? 

Do I need to tell the people that our courts are being 
used as a means of exploitation? Would I need to offer 
proof of this statement? Is it not a fact that is sus- 
ceptible of the best proof that there are at this time 
attorneys whose business as attorneys is to bring actions 
in the courts and hold the threat of the law as a club 
over the heads of men to extort money in defiance of the 
law? 

If this statement is true, what can be said of the hold- 
ing of our courts that every attorney is in fact a part 
of the court. Is it true that the attorney is a part of the 
court in which he brings an action? If it is, does not 
this honorable mantle of authority bring with it grave 
responsibilities? Can it be said that the court as a party 
to such a partnership is responsible for the acts of the 
attorney? And then does this partnership place upon 
the head of the attorney responsibility for the acts of 
the court? 

Courts! After you have answered these questions, 
will you tell us as you sit in judgment upon the trial of 
a case before you, when you find the golden rule of 
right on one side of the contention, and the law on the 
other side, who gets the judgment? I will relieve our 
honorable courts the embarrassment of making answer 
as I say that no matter how plainly the judge may see 
the confliction between the right and the law, he is the 
servant of the law, and his judgment must be rendered 
accordingly. It is his sworn duty to render his decision 
on the law. We are not complaining of this, but we 



128 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

insist that the laws are made to cover conditions that 
are general, and that no statute can be made to cover 
every condition that will arise between men. Because of 
this fact the courts are many times helpless to render 
just judgments under their handicaps in a multitude of 
cases. 

Lawyer! You have been employed to prosecute the 
case at bar. It is your case. If you win, it will mean 
prestige, more practice and better fees. If you lose, 
your client will be dissatisfied, and you may not be able 
to explain to his satisfaction. He may judge you in- 
competent. He may accuse you of betrayal. The public 
looks askance at a loser. The irony of fate says, "I 
must win." "Right or wrong, I must win this case." 
You go into a case to seek a judgment. You avail your- 
self of every technicality of the law known to the pro- 
fession. You contend that you have been employed to 
win, and with your whole soul you bend every energy 
toward that purpose. 

Client ! Whether you stand before the court as plaintiff 
or defendant, you contend for what you deem your 
rights. If you lose, it is a double loss. Blind to every 
question but the question of winning, you gather your 
evidence and your energies for the fight. You are sworn 
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth. Did you do this, or did you withhold something 
because it was not asked you, or because it might preju- 
dice the case? Ah! You told the truth. Your con- 
science would not let you swear a lie. Your opponent 
was not so conscientious. He swort a lie, and proved it 
by a witness that was not more conscientious than he. 
The judge heard the testimony, and as he looked you in 
the face he felt that you had sworn the truth, but judges 
cannot read minds. It is their business to render judg- 



ARBITRATION 129 

ments on the preponderance of the evidence, and the 
preponderance of the evidence was against you. So was 
the judgment, and the costs that must follow the judg- 
ment. You paid the judgment and the costs, and then 
your attorney, and went home to philosophize over the 
justice of that "grandest structure of jurisprudence ever 
built by human government." 

We would not have our readers understand that we 
have disrespect for the laws or their application, nor for 
that splendid line of judicial decisions that have been 
written into the supreme laws of the land. They are so 
full of truth, so full of legal definitions of right, so pro- 
found in their argument of fundamental law, and so 
exhaustive in their enumeration of men's inherent rights, 
that they can only elicit the admiration of thinking 
men everywhere, but we wish to be understood to criti- 
cize the system of legal jurisprudence by which our laws 
are administered. 

The great masses of the people have little litigation. 
They need an easy and* a speedy means of settling their 
differenences. They never apply to the courts as a means 
of getting advantage, or for exploitation. They measure 
their rights by a code of morals as old as civilization. 
Delay is intolerable to them. It works an injury to 
both parties. It stands in the way of bringing a just 
decision. Technical advantage is beneath their dignity 
and their sense of right. Simple justice is the measure 
of their code of law. They know of their right of ap- 
peal, but they know that an appeal means defeat to the 
man who wins as well as the man who loses. 

Will someone tell us why, if an appeal to the supreme 
court cannot be taken in cases below $20 when the case 
is tried by a jury, upon the same reasoning it might not 
be made a hundred or a thousand dollars or why an 
appeal might not be eliminated in all cases? 
10 



ISO BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

I want to assert at this point that the people believe 
more in the honesty of their neighbors than they do in 
the efficiency of the courts. What they want is some 
easy and cheap method of bringing exact justice in the 
disputed affairs of life. They are beginning to wonder 
if we have not built up a judicial oligarchy in this 
country that will erstwhile become a menace to our free 
institutions if such an oligarchy is not already built. 

Already laws have been passed preventing all but 
lawyers from holding judicial offices above justice of the 
peace, and we must witness with concern the fact that 
our congress has for years been a congress of lawyers. 
This means that our laws are being made by profes- 
sional lawyers, they are being interpreted by compulsory 
lawyer courts, and, largely, they are being executed by 
lawyer executives. 

Does this not mean that either by law or through con- 
sent we have built up a professional test for public 
service that has in effect closed the doors to all who 
have not secured a professional training, and hold a 
license to practice in the courts? 

We do not mention this fact to arouse antagonism 
against the legal profession in this country, but to call 
attention to what seems the building up of a legal im- 
pediment to advancement that erstwhile may become a 
galling yoke upon liberty loving Americans. 

What is the remedy for all this misuse or abuse of the 
law, and the courts for their failure to fulfill the mis- 
sion for which they were established? This question 
must be answered in the future of this country. So 
much has been said in recent 3 r ears about the recall of 
judges that no thinking man can fail to recognize that 
the people have lost confidence in the efficacy of the 
courts. 



ARBITRATION 131 

Nothing can be gained by assailing the good name of 
honorable judges, but the fact that they have not cried 
out for remedies of the wrongs that everybody recog- 
nizes as fundamental is sufficient excuse for the com- 
plaints t'hat are heard on every hand. 

The people will not long brook the delays that courts 
refuse or neglect to eliminate from court procedure. 
They will not tolerate the sharp technical practices of 
attorneys with the sanction of the courts to defeat jus- 
tice. They are at this moment crying out against be- 
littling the trial of a just cause in the court into the 
trial of the skill of technical attorneys instead of a trial 
of the case at bar. 

Court practices must be simplified. The courts them- 
selves should see that this is done without delay. If 
they will not remedy this flagrant wrong the people, 
through their legislative right, must do it. 

But even when that is done we will find that the en- 
tire system of judicial proceedings is cumbersome, and 
so long as this is true its work will be fraught with 
dissatisfaction. 

I ask again, "What is the remedy?" The remedy for 
the present day judicial interpretations of the laws and 
their application to the settlement of disputes among 
men is to be found only in a system of arbitration. 

For many years the things that we have recorded 
pertaining to the failure of the courts in securing jus- 
tice to litigants have been admitted by all thinking men, 
among which are many of the brightest attorneys of the 
country. In some of the states attempts have been made 
to simplify the code of legal procedure, and especially 
to eliminate much of the courts' delays. These efforts 
have been fruitful of little good. 

Voluntary arbitration has been written into the 



132 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

statutes of some of the more progressive states, but vol- 
untary arbitration can seldom be made effective while 
both parties to the controversy must sign consent to 
arbitrate. So long as the consent of both parties must 
be had before the remed}^ can be applied, little can be 
accomplished. 

Arbitration is the Christian way of settling disputes 
among men. It knows no motive but a desire to do 
right between man and man. It recognizes that human 
frailty is liable to err. It is written into the doctrines 
of some of the most influential denominations of the 
church that "brother cannot go to law with brother," 
but in this intensely commercial age, this church law 
has lost its force, and stands upon the ritual as a dead 
letter. In this law of the church arbitration was com- 
pulsory. Right between the brethren was the measure 
by which the case was determined, and the golden rule 
of life was the law of the case at hand, and when this 
had been ascertained, there was no appeal. 

Who will say that arbitration is wrong ? Who will say 
that it will not find the rights between litigants? If it 
will do this, why not make it compulsory? 

Under the present application of the law, if I chose to 
sue a man, the court in which my petition is filed issues 
a summons fixing a date for the trial of the case. "When 
the sheriff's summons showing legal service is returned, 
the court's authority is complete. Should I prefer to 
arbitrate the case before our friends and neighbors 
rather than to have it tried in a court I am handicapped 
because the laws of Nebraska do not permit arbitration 
unless both parties consent. Arbitration should be effec- 
tive upon the request of either party to the dispute. 
This would settle the authority. Under the present law 
both parties must agree. 



ARBITRATION 183 

Compulsory arbitration will settle disputes along 
purely ethical lines, and will at once drive a large per 
cent of the trouble and litigation out of the land. It will 
bring justice so speedily that no man will be tempted to 
wear the other out by delays. It would unload from 
the backs of the taxpaj^ers a large per cent of the bur- 
den of expenses. It will so purify the atmosphere of 
doubt and uncertainty that the inefficiency and delay of 
our courts have forced upon the people and into the 
public opinion, that instead of a feeling of doubt there 
would be a feeling of confidence. It will eliminate the 
finding of verdicts on technicalities and without due 
consideration of the moral rights of litigants. But we 
would not stop with compulsory arbitration of disputes 
between individuals. If the principle of arbitration is 
good between men it will be good between nations. If 
it will work between nations it will be good between the 
disputes of capital and labor. 

Only a few years ago a great railroad strike pre- 
vented the moving of coal in the face of approaching 
winter. The people's lives were in peril. Both parties 
to the controversy were obstinate. Committees pleaded 
for settlement without avail. Arbitration was several 
times tendered only to be refused. The public became 
alarmed. They saw ahead the stinging wintry days 
when rich and poor alike must suffer. They petitioned 
the government to compel arbitration, but the govern- 
ment was without authority. The public, innocent of 
any wrong, was at the mercy of a heartless corporation 
contending over a few cents pay to laborers already 
underpaid, but this nation saw as it never saw before 
the necessity of securing some effective means of settle- 
ment between organized labor and organized capital. 

There is at this time only one remedy, and that rem- 
edy is compulsory arbitration. 



13 J, BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Has capital no rights under the law? Are its inter- 
ests in danger when the simple rule of right is applied 
to its methods? Let them open their books and let the 
light of truth in upon the contention. Labor has rights 
that must be respected. It has a right to continuous 
employment during efficient service, because it is the 
basis of every created thing. We must remember that 
the public has rights that must be respected, no matter 
whether the corporation is doing a public service busi- 
ness or not. There is no law at this time by which all 
these rights can be respected at the same time, and per- 
haps no law can be framed that will meet the exigencies 
of all cases but a law of compulsory arbitration. 

Compulsory arbitration is the application of the 
golden rule in the settlement of the disputes among 
men. This is fundamental. When men shall find them- 
selves willing to abide the decision of their neighbors 
instead of having them decided at the bar of a court, 
they will be able to get speedy settlement of their dif- 
ferences with the least risk of a miscarriage of justice. 

In a Christian democracy every city and ever}^ pre- 
cinct in the United States should have an established 
arbitration court where the people could go with the 
smallest matter that may engender disputes in the com- 
munity. It is safe to say that such a court, at the head 
of which must sit not necessarily men trained in the 
laws, but men well grounded in the eternal principles of 
right between man and man, would divide the litigation 
in any state by two, and it would become so popular in 
a few years that the larger cases would soon find their 
way into that court because it would assure the bringing 
of a speedy verdict and exact justice. 

These thoughts are not new. They are simply old 
thoughts that are so righteous as to demand their adop- 



ARBITRATION 135 

tion as a means of escape from the handicap of miscar- 
riage of justice in our courts. 

Have 3^011 not read of the wonderful work of such 
men as Judge Ben Lindsay of Denver, and many others 
in the cities of our country, among the boys ? This work 
is so wonderful and so astounding as to have shaken the 
very nation by its results. 

Some of the cities have established what is termed 
"Free Legal Aid" courts, where the poor can get legal 
service and legal advice without paying for it. A "free 
legal aid" court is simply the cry of the community for 
a remedy of the evils of our system of jurisprudence. 
Under the very eyes of the courts of justice the rights 
of those who are not able to defend them are trampled 
under the feet of men. Along with the other handicaps 
of poverty, this handicap has been intolerable. 

Do we not realize that more than half of the cases 
that receive the attention of the courts should never have 
been brought? Seven divorce cases out of every ten 
should never have disgraced the records of a court. A 
friendly investigation by some good old mother, and the 
1 kindly and intelligent advice of her great heart would 
bring the parties to reflect before they filed their exag- 
gerated pleadings and put up the bars in vile and un- 
true statements that must stand in the way of any 
friendly adjustment. Christian arbitration would save 
many a family from the ruin that generally follows 
such domestic troubles. This nation must come to study 
the underlying causes of the domestic troubles of this 
age and find the remedy for them. 

Nothing has been said about the expense of such a 
court as we are urging. To this we would say: There 
is not a church in the land that could not furnish to the 
arbitration court a list of old and well qualified men and 



136 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

women who would be glad to render service as arbitra- 
tors upon request, and to perform this service for the 
good of the community when necessary, but when not 
necessary a fee would be fixed in the same manner as 
the laws now provide for the payment of jurors and 
arbitrators at this time. 

One more argument for such an arbitration court and 
that argument is the fact that in all cases the arbitrators 
chosen might and should be men who had knowledge of 
the business of the men who were contending. If a 
complaint called for the knowledge of men trained in a 
certain business or calling such men or women would be 
chosen. This plan of selecting jurors so far excels our 
present jury system as to command the greatest respect, 
for it would call into service in each individual case the 
best trained men to do the work that the litigants 
needed. Christian arbitration under the law is the easy 
remedy for the slow and uncertain processes of the law 
and it must appeal to the judgment of every thinking 
man and woman who has knowledge of the present in- 
efficient methods of settling disputes. 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 137 



Chapter IX 

INDUSTRIAL PEACE 

Industry began when God entered into that partner- 
ship with man in the production of the foodstuffs upon 
which he must subsist at the very beginning of time. 
Human life has ever been dependent upon God's prom- 
ise of the sunshine and the shower, and upon man's 
diligence in his efforts to claim the promise, and to re- 
deem it by doing his part in the production of the good 
things of life. 

From the creation of man until fifty years ago the 
machine had little part in the economy of production, 
but today we find that machinery has so enhanced the 
power of man to produce the wealth that goes into the 
nation's storehouses that one man, by the aid of machin- 
ery, can produce more wealth in a day than many men 
could produce without the machine. 

What is the productive capacity of this nation? Who 
can answer that question? Before a nation goes to war 
it must know how many ablebodied men it has to go to 
the front in defense of the nation's flag. In the same 
manner it should know just what its real force for the 
production of wealth is, and be able to keep that pro- 
ductive force engaged in the work of producing the 
things that are necessary for the support of the nation. 

What are the available forces of production in our 
country? No one has yet answered that question, but 
we assume without argument that Ave would agree that 
such a force would be represented by the ablebodied 
men and women of the entire country. But is this force 
available? Can this nation rely upon its ablebodied men 



138 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

and women as a real productive force ? You will readily 
answer, "It cannot." Then I will not need to tell you that 
in every section of our country there are men and women 
living from childhood to old age who never in a life- 
time produced a dollars worth of wealth. We some- 
times call them the "Idle Kich." They, by inheritance 
or otherwise, have possession of enough of this world's 
goods to supply their earthly needs for a lifetime with- 
out effort. "May an ablebodied man claim a share of 
the products of labor who never rendered his share of 
the labor that produced it?" 

Since this question is raised someone is asking, "Why 
should all labor, when our storehouses have always been 
supplied with enough and to spare?" We answer, 
"There are thousands of men and women toiling today 
for their daily bread, who, long ago, had produced 
enough of this world's goods to supply a dozen people 
for a lifetime, and they are still obliged to choose be- 
tween hard labor and the poorhouse, and this, too, while 
the labor of those same hands are supporting an army 
of young, ablebodied men and women in absolute idle- 
ness." 

This question is raised, "How many years of labor is 
necessary to supply the wants of an average family, if 
the head of the family labors eight hours a day and 
three hundred days in the year?" The answer to this 
question is easy. Twenty years with the improved ma- 
chinery of this generation would be more than sufficient. 
Our storehouses would be full to overflowing and our 
people would be happy. 

Fifty years ago, before this age of industrial conquest 
had fastened itself upon us, a different condition pre- 
vailed. When we look back we call those "The good old 
days of our fathers." Well, they were happy days even 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 1S9 

if the soap was made in the home, and the good old 
mother knit the hosiery, and made every article of cloth- 
ing for both men and women, and yet all were supplied 
with plenty. In those good old days all the family 
worked. Labor was honorable. Maternity was sacredly 
respected in the raising of a family. Divorces were 
rare. Idiocy was almost unknown. Insane asylums 
were seldom needed. Penitentiaries were almost without 
use, but those good old days are gone, and a new civili- 
zation with its new demands is upon us. 

They tell us that the human family is demanding 
more today than it ever demanded before. This is true. 
It ought to demand more. It has a right to more. The 
labor of this nation has produced the things that have 
gone into the storehouses, and nothing is too good for 
the men and women who produced them. 

This generation does produce and demand more of the 
good things of life, more of the blessings of this new 
age than any generation that has preceded it, but does 
this fact lay upon the backs of the few the burden of 
providing those blessings, and give no explanation for 
the idleness all around them? 

Tell us, men of this thoughtless generation ! Just by 
what right may a man go to the storehouses and demand 
a share of the daily bread that the labor of this nation 
has produced, and there offer as an excuse for not work- 
ing, the story that a good old father had left enough 
stored energy to support him for his natural life? The 
duty to earn is the right to live, and when God shall 
come, if He ever does, to scourge the world of sin. He 
will drive the idlers from the land first, because of all 
sinners, the idler is the worst. 

So long have we been accustomed to the story of toil 
from early childhood until the tottering footsteps of old 



HO BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

age falter and fail at the edge of an open grave, and so 
long has this condition gone unchallenged, that we have 
spent little energy in the study of man's capacity to 
produce wealth, nor have we given thought to the doc- 
trine that "wealth belongs to him who creates it." We 
have contented ourselves with that infamous doctrine 
that "wealth belongs to him who gets it," and we have 
given ourselves little concern as to the manner of the 
getting. 

The laborers of this nation have been taught, and 
have without thinking subscribed to that doctrine, or 
theory of life, that "man's labors begin with the cradle 
and end with the grave," and they have so long been 
content with that doctrine that we almost fear to suggest 
this thought, lest we agitate the laborers to reckless 
reasoning, and the idlers to unjust criticism. 

It is indeed true that we are living in a complex civili- 
zation. Fifty years ago a man with his crude imple- 
ments could produce enough for his large family and to 
spare. He toiled upon his farm while his good wife 
from early dawn till bedtime devoted herself to caring 
and providing for the family. As I look back over a 
stretch of fifty years and see my good old mother, bent 
with the burden of her toil, doing the work of an old- 
fashioned family, many times burning the midnight oil 
in her devoted efforts to fulfill what she cherished as a 
duty to her loved ones, I wonder whether the good Lord 
did not endow her with more strength and endurance 
than was given to ordinary mortals, but this cannot be, 
for long before she had lived her alloted three score 
years and ten, the silver threads of age, the stooping 
form, the unsteady step, told us that she would soon 
join him, who had gone before to that only rest they 
had ever known that did not come by some forced cir- 
cumstance. 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE HI 

Since those days, the God of our fathers has unlocked 
the storehouses of His hidden mysteries. The master 
mind of man has harnessed the hidden forces of nature, 
and by machinery of his own conception, has applied 
those forces to the production of wealth. So perfectly 
do these applied powers work for their masters that in 
the manufacture of the articles of daily consumption, 
one man can do the work of many. No man knows at 
this time the exact per cent of enhancement machinery 
has brought in the production of wealth, but it is cer- 
tain that if all men worked as they did fifty years ago, 
the nation's storehouses would soon fill to overflowing, 
and the people would enjoy a well-merited rest. 

Labor first looked upon the machine as its natural 
enemy. They saw it as a competitor for their job. Even 
as early as 1877 men were facing "the job!" In Massa- 
chusetts, that great manufacturing state in 1877, machin- 
ery the equivalent of 1,913,448 men were in actual opera- 
tion, while only 266,339 persons were actually employed. 
Here we have a displacement of the labor of 1,645,145 
men and the production enhanced six times. These fig- 
ures were given in a report to the government forty 
years ago by Carroll D. Wright, and since that time 
the machine has been perfected in a thousand ways and 
its production enhanced many times. 

Labor had a right to be afraid of the influence of the 
machine. It still urged that the machine would drive 
honest labor out of employment and bring a condition 
of enforced idleness. They argued that idleness would 
brew mischief, while employment would promote virtue. 
They insisted that labor would no longer be respected, 
and that laboring men would not find an honorable 
place in society. They further insisted that the laboring 
people are honest, and that honest men only wanted an 
opportunity to labor for their starving families. 



U2 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

These fears were shared by many of the best and 
wisest men of the nation, because they were the natural 
answer to the wonderful power of enhanced productive 
possibilities. 

But what is the power of production at this time, 
forty years after this report of Carroll D. Wright ? The 
census bulletin of 1909 gives the number of wage earn- 
ers as 6,615,046 and the product of their manufacture as 
$20,672,052,000. This is a per capita production of 
$3,127 worth of goods. This per capita varies in the 
several states of the Union. In Kansas it was $7,353, 
and in Nebraska it was $8,887. Thus it will be seen 
that in the nation one man in the manufacturing indus- 
tries of the entire county produced every day he worked 
$10.40 worth of goods, while in Nebraska he would pro- 
duce $27.22 per day. 

These figures are given to show the productive ca- 
pacity of man, and from them we can learn what the 
entire nation could produce if all the people were en- 
gaged in the business of production. 

But it must not be forgotten that all men who do 
honest work are not in this sense producers of wealth. 
Under our complex civilization the luxuries of yesterday 
are the necessities of today. The people of the corn belt 
demand the products of the citrus belt. The fruits of 
the Pacific find their way into the homes of every sec- 
tion of the nation. The mines must be worked to pro- 
duce coal and metals that go into the industries of the 
country. The railroads must be manned to carry on the 
exchanges of the products of every section. All these 
are laborers in every right sense and every economy of 
our civilization. 

But why study this question further? Have we not 
shown conclusively that with our present means of pro- 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE US 

duction, our workers are able to give to the people more 
of the blessings of their toil than they can consume? 

The basic principle of industry is labor. It is the 
fundamental first cause of every created thing. "Out of 
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" was a com- 
mand to labor, and that command carried with it a 
promise, implied it is true, but just as sacred, and none 
the less certain, that if a man labors, to him must belong 
the result of that labor. To him it must belong, to 
have, to hold, to sell, or to give to his brother. 

The first law of ownership is the fulfillment of God's 
command to labor for the bread of life. This law is 
fundamental. It has never been repealed. No man can 
dispute it, and he who claims ownership by this right 
bases his claim to ownership upon God's promise, and 
that promise was good. 

The world is beginning to understand as it never un- 
derstood before, the meaning of that oft-repeated asser- 
tion, "Agriculture is fundamental." In the economy of 
God's creation, agriculture is necessary to the life of 
every individual living upon the earth. If this is true, 
every problem of agriculture is the individual concern 
of every man and woman liA T ing toda}^, as well as for 
the generations who shall follow after us, and upon 
whom the people will be so dependent for keeping in- 
violate that partnership with God in the production of 
the foodstuffs of the world. 

No student of affairs will dispute the statement that 
among the many grave problems of the world, no prob- 
lem has reached as high a state of perfection in its road 
to a complete solution of production as the problem of 
agriculture. 

The farmer sows in the springtime with an abiding 
faith in God's promise of the sunshine and the shower. 



1U BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

He cultivates his crops. He fights his natural enemies, 
frost, drought, hail, thorns and thistles, and a thousand 
other enemies, and from the seedtime until the harvest 
his reward is dependent upon intelligent and constant 
toil, under conditions over which he can have no control. 

But when his crop is gathered and the labors of the 
summer have been rewarded with the bounty of an 
abundant harvest, he finds himself confronted with 
graver problems than any with which he has previously 
been obliged to cope. Here he is face to face with the 
greatest problem that has ever confronted the world — 
the problem of distribution, and associated with it the 
problem of price. 

I do not overstate the fact when I say that at no time 
in the history of the world was the problem of distribu- 
tion and the problem of price so acute as they are at this 
moment, for what matters how faithfully the great army 
of farmers study the problems of production if, after the 
storehouses of the nation are full to overflowing, the 
people, not in this country alone, but in the world, must 
starve ? 

For half a century the farmers have been the victims 
of such varying prices as to arouse suspicion that the 
prices of the products of their strenuous toil were not 
the result of natural conditions. When they were obliged 
to sell their corn at 10 cents and their wheat at 35 cents 
per bushel, after marketing it long distances, the}^ were 
pacified with the story of overproduction. When a panic 
in the money market stagnated the demand for their 
products, they were fed on the story that panics were 
caused by conditions over which they had no control. 
Even in these times of intellectual research, and of 
knowledge of commercial conditions, a deliberate at- 
tempt is being made to raise the tariff, and insist that 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE Uo 

the "tariff bogy" has been the cause of low prices. The 
farmers are aroused. They know well that in the re- 
construction that was sure to come to this country after 
the war with all its blighting effects, they were the first 
to receive the deadly blows of ruinous prices. By a 
thousand tests they felt that even though the world 
stood in dire need of the products of the farm, and with- 
holding of foodstuffs meant starvation to millions of the 
children of men, a merciless army of profiteers were in 
power in the work of distributing the foodstuffs of the 
world, and they seemed to forget that the foodstuffs of 
the farms of this nation were necessary to the very life 
of every man and woman and child under the folds of 
Old Glory. And this complaint is not yet all. Farmers 
well remembered the half-eentury-old fight they were 
obliged to make to secure and protect their rights to 
honest weights and measures. Dishonest scales and 
weights were the sore problems of the farmers of forty 
years ago, but today they have been obliged to fight a 
battle that has been a thousand times more serious — the 
problem of the grain gambler, and of grading the grain 
at the terminal elevators. 

Then they complained of the diversity of price be- 
tween the raw and the finished product of the farm and 
factory, but today, nearly three years after the armistice 
was signed, the diversity between the raw material and 
the finished products of wheat and corn are little less 
than criminal. 

No class of farmers has suffered more from the period 
of reconstruction than the men who are raising cattle 
and sheep and hogs to feed the world. If you ask the 
cause, we can only tell you that the power of someone 
other than the producer to fix the price of the raw ma- 
terial and then the finished product is supreme. The 

11 



U6 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

power to fix the price is the last word in the exploita- 
tion of a helpless world. 

But what about these values, and the price of the 
things we have to sell? The measure of value, and the 
problem of price, are the two greatest problems of the 
industrial world today. Value is fixed by the cost of 
the raw material and the labor that goes into the thing. 
Thus the value of an article of commerce is simply the 
value of the raw material plus the cost of the labor that- 
brought it into commercial perfection. The cost-plus 
theory is correct. The value of a bushel of wheat is 
simply the actual cost of the labor, plus every other ele- 
ment of cost that entered into the production of the 
wheat. 

If it is true that the cost of any article is the cost of 
the raw material, plus the labor necessary for its prep- 
aration for the market, we have another problem to solve 
before we can fix the price, for there has never been a 
fixed value for labor. 

The price of labor in the commercial world in this 
country has ever been subject to the caprice of supply 
and demand. In the days when the manufacturing in- 
dustries were crying out for protection of their infant 
industries by levying a protective tariff, a tariff wall 
was built around this nation that permitted the manu- 
facturers to fix the price of their products at the cost 
of the production plus the actual price the article cost, 
but while this protection was given to the manufactur- 
ers, the laborers of the nation were obliged to compete 
with the cheap labor of Europe, and every foreign coun- 
try on the other side of the water. Competition for 
labor and protection for the manufacturer. 

As a result of that protection, the infant industries of 
this nation in 1870 became the giant monopolies of 1921. 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE W 

What is the value of a day's labor on the farm ? Will 
someone answer this question? An experience of more 
than forty years has taught me that the value of a day's 
labor on the farm is the most uncertain element in the 
world at this time. 

Farmers, have you ever kept your time in hours while 
you make your crop? Do you ever keep books on your 
farming operations ? Do you make an inventory of your 
possessions once a year to ascertain just how many dol- 
lars you earn during the year? If you do these things, 
you will soon come to know just what "price" and 
"value" are doing for you in your commercial transac- 
tions. 

In 1918, a thousand bushels of wheat were worth 
$3,000. Who fixed that as the price? You will no 
doubt tell me that this price was measured by our dollar 
and that the dollar is our standard of value. 

Last year the same thousand bushels of wheat was 
only worth $1,300. The wheat was just as good, and the 
world's supply smaller than it was in 1918, but our 
dollar, that "honest dollar of our daddies," made a dif- 
ference of $1,200 in the price you were obliged to take 
for it. 

Our dollar is the nation's standard measure of value. 
Our yard is the standard measure of cloth, and our 
pound containing sixteen ounces is our fixed standard of 
weight. If we consult the statutes of the states we will 
find that the laws not only fix the standards of weight 
and measure, but they protect the people by stringent 
legislation from the use of either a scale or a measure 
that is in the least defective. These are honest meas- 
ures, and if a merchant measured to you ten yards of 
print today, it would measure just ten yards one year 
from this time. But our "honest dollar," based on that 



U8 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

time-honored gold standard because of its stability of 
value, measured your thousand bushels of wheat in 1918 
worth $3,000 and in less than two years it measured, or 
short-measured, the same wheat worth only $1,300. 

A cry went up a year ago advising the farmers to 
hold their wheat for three dollars a bushel, but that 
dollar of our "daddies" had the upper hand, and the 
men who held their wheat for three dollars per bushel 
paid the price of a misunderstanding of the power of 
men to fix the price. 

Space forbids my taking the time to call your atten- 
tion to the many shortcomings of our dollar in the 
manipulation of prices in these days of reconstruction, 
but you have a concrete example in every community in 
the United States in the measure of value placed upon 
the farm lands. In 1918 your farm was worth $300 per 
acre, and in less than one year it changed its estimate of 
value, and put the price at $150 an acre, and no market. 
You borrowed money expecting to sell your corn crop at 
$1.50 per bushel to pay it back, but the $1,500 you 
thought you would pay with a thousand bushels of corn 
took five thousand bushels of }^our corn, and you had to 
sell hogs to pay the difference in interest. 

Every farmer must learn that he is buying dollars 
with grain and that sometimes it takes too much human 
energy to produce grain enough to buy the dollars that 
your emergencies demand. 

What is value, and how is the value of a thing fixed? 
Does supply and demand fix values? Will someone tell 
us if the supply of wheat fixes the value of that neces- 
sary article of commerce in the world today? Does 
supply and demand fix the value of your hog or your 
steer? Nearly the whole world knows at this time that 
they do not. 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE W 

How about interest? Does supply and demand fix the 
rate of interest. Someone tells us that there is no money 
in the banks at this time, and that is the reason we can- 
not borrow. Can this be true? Will someone tell us 
where all the money has gone? Has it left the country? 
If it has not left the country, where is it? Less than 
ten years ago congress passed the Federal Reserve Bank 
law, with the promise that it would protect the people 
from the shortages of money that produce panics and 
hamper industry. That Federal Reserve law piloted the 
old ship of state through the greatest war in all history ; 
it floated billions of dollars in the bonds of the nation 
and then financed our allies with a loan of ten billion 
dollars. Such an undertaking in other times, and under 
other conditions, would have shaken the foundations of 
this government. But after the war was over, after 
peace was declared, and after three years of the greatest 
prosperity that was ever known in any country, in any 
age, a curtain of the blackest financial distress that ever 
spread its mantle of darkness and debt and ruin over 
any nation on earth fell upon this nation over night, 
and brought in its wake bank failures, mortgage fore- 
closures, ruined homes, ruined fortunes, and every calam- 
ity that always follows any disturbance of the money 
of a country. 

Business men and farmers everywhere cried out in 
their desperation, "Where has all the money gone?" 
The country banks everywhere appealed to the Federal 
Reserve banks for relief, but they appealed in vain; in- 
terest rates soared up to the legal limit, and even then 
we found no relief; usury laws were disregarded, and 
the prices of products went so low as to demoralize in- 
dustry ; labor, out of employment, cried out for the right 
to earn a living, but their cry was never heeded. 



150 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Students of economics, and thinking men in every 
walk of life, are asking for the cause of this blight of 
the nation's industries that came almost over night. 
Every effect must have an underlying first cause. Rec- 
ognizing this fact of economics, there is but one ques- 
tion, and that question is, Where lies the fault? Tell 
us, wise men of business ! What broke the power of the 
Federal Eeserve system after the heavy load of the great 
war was relaxed? Was there less money in the country 
after the war than before? If we had the same amount 
of money in existence after the war, why was it not kept 
at work exchanging the so much needed products of 
industry ? 

Without attempting an explanation, I want to raise 
some questions for the purpose of provoking investiga- 
tion and inquiry. Will someone answer the question, 
"Why, with thirteen Federal Eeserve Banks in the na- 
tion, was there possible such unity of action when the 
moment arrived to bring on the nation-wide strin- 
gency?" Then will someone tell the people whether the 
critical financial stringency we are passing through is 
the result of natural causes over which no one had pos- 
sible control, or was it brought about by the organized 
bankers of the nation with the power of the Federal 
Banks as a working head, for gain? Is it a possible 
fact that the bankers saw that the harvest was already 
ripe, and ready for the reapers, and with one accord the 
cry of contraction was sent out, and then the crop of 
past due paper and the government bonds in the hands 
of men and women of small means was harvested while 
the nation groaned under the unjust burdens that such a 
policy is sure to bring? Failing to answer these ques- 
tions, the bankers of this nation will for a hundred 
years rest under a suspicion that they were directly re- 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 151 

sponsible for the stringency of money and the destruc- 
tion of credit that inevitably spread industrial ruin into 
every section of the nation. 

Thinking men know that there is not a better organ- 
ized business in the world today than the organized 
bankers of the country. They tremble when they con- 
template the power of such an organization. The busi- 
ness of the bankers of the nation is the gathering of in- 
terest, and when they contemplate that the nation in its 
individual capacity, and as individuals and corporation, 
is at this time paying more than $5,000,000,000 interest 
alone annually, and then that the budget of national 
expenses is the same, they tremble for the safety of the 
great army of men and women who labor to produce 
this awful mountain of wealth. 

Again we ask, could our financiers have averted the 
disaster? These are questions that the bankers of this 
nation should answer in such a manner as to be within 
the understanding of the commonest man of the world. 

Industrial peace ! Who can fix the price of industrial 
peace ? Will it come while it is still possible for some un- 
seen power to crush one-half the value out of every farm, 
every city home, every bushel of wheat, every hog and 
steer and cow, as well as every species of property, 
within thirty days by hiding the money of the country 
and refusing to loan the very lifeblood of the industrial 
world? Will industrial peace be possible while a few 
men sitting around a table and calling themselves "The 
Board of Trade" can say every day what the producers — 
that great army of farmers — may have for their corn 
and their wheat? Will industrial peace be possible 
while the wage workers of the world are obliged to de- 
pend for both the work and wage upon an organized 
army of manufacturers whose business it is to convert 



152 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

raw material into the finished product for gain? Will 
it be possible ever to attain industrial peace while the 
distribution of the products of labor is controlled by an 
organized trade, and while the cost of every article of 
commerce is protected by law in its trade secrets ? When 
these questions have been answered, and not till then, 
will we be on the way to a just solution of industrial 
problems. 

Organized labor has fought for fifty years for the 
right to a living wage, with no other weapon than the 
strike, and their cause is still in a state of chaos. The 
agriculturalists and the laborers have been little con- 
sidered in the nation's problems of industry. Nothing 
points to this with more force than the facts shown by 
the appropriations of congress. The present congress 
appropriated for the army $392,559,000, for the navy 
$443,279,000, for pensions $279,150,000. Think of it! 
One billion one hundred and five million dollars for an 
army and for the support of the victims of such a pol- 
icy of ruin as militarism brings, and only the pittance 
of $30,712,000 for agriculture. 

Our law makers forgot that the farmers of this na- 
tion went out into the undeveloped prairies of the great 
west to subdue the soil, and prepare it for the homes of 
the millions who should come after them. Do they not 
know that they went ahead of the railroads, and the 
markets, and the schools, and the churches, and with a 
courage born of desperation built their humble homes? 
Have they forgotten that the work these pioneers did 
was then, and is now, essential to the very life of the 
nation ? Do they not know that in spite of the drought, 
and the grasshoppers, and the blizzards, and the usur- 
ers, and the mortgages, they produced enough of this 
world's goods to feed an army several times their num- 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 15S 

ber? Do they not know that after fifty years of toil on 
the farm and in the factory, the great mass of workers 
are crying out that they are still unfed and unclothed, 
and some remedy must be found for the solution of the 
problem of industrial war that has well-nigh prostrated 
every energy of this nation for fifty years? 

What is to be the price of industrial peace in this na- 
tion and the world? Who can answer this momentous 
question? Have we not for a thousand years preached 
the doctrine of competition, and must we not admit that 
from the country grocery to the great trusts that con- 
trol the industries of nations there is now no such thing 
as competition? Competition is the strife of beasts. It 
has no place in the affairs of a Christian people. 

Has the world not come to know that there is no 
problem so intricate that its solution cannot be found 
under God? These problems must be solved. They can 
be solved, and the solution must be found in some righte- 
ous stabilization of industry. If prices were stable, in- 
dustry would be at peace. Everything in a commercial 
nation must depend upon price. Can we longer depend 
upon that fallacy of a by-gone generation called "supply 
and demand"? Does it work in this age of organiza- 
tion ? It does not, and if this is true, we must find some 
other means of solving the problem. The question of 
price is the beginning of the final adjustment that must 
be made before the world can hope for the beginning of 
industrial peace, and it must be considered as it relates 
to the products of labor in every field of industry, and 
as it relates to labor for wage. 

A Living Wage 

Because the whole problem of price relates to labor, 
we shall treat labor first under the subject of "A Living 
Wage". 



15It BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

The claim to a living wage is a natural right. This 
claim is absolute. The basic principle of the right of a 
living wage is the right to live from the fruits of the 
earth. This right is fundamental. It is acknowledged 
by every civilized nation of the earth. It is insisted 
upon by Christian people everywhere. The right to a 
living wage is superior to any right of private property. 
The Christian ethics of this generation tell the rich man 
that the superfluous bread, and shoes, and clothing in 
his possession belongs to his hungry and naked neigh- 
bors. More than this. The alms given by the rich to 
the poor are simply the payment of a debt. The title 
to private property as well as common property is con- 
stituted in the primary principle of human needs. 

Every man has a right to live as a man, and not as an 
animal, says a noted economist. He must have food and 
shelter, as well as opportunity for physical, moral, in- 
tellectual and spiritual uplift. The whole theory of a 
laborer's right to a living wage is simply the right to a 
decent living. 

Every commodity produced by man has a certain and 
a fair valuation. This valuation must be entirely inde- 
pendent of any valuation that comes from higgling 
markets. 

Who is to say what the just price of any given com- 
modity shall be? We are taught that every article of 
the commercial world has a specific labor cost. If this 
doctrine is right, then the basis of value is the cost in 
labor. This seems to be a true statement, but someone 
rises to assert that a just wage is the wage that men 
actually pay in the strife of competitive bargaining. 

Have the laborers of this nation not had enough of 
the application of competitive bargaining? Have they 
not for a hundred years been in a most unrighteous com- 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 155 

petition with the underpaid and underfed labor of 
Europe? Have they not paid their share to the sup- 
port of the nation while these underfed laborers have 
come to our shores to compete with American workmen 
under our tariff-protected industries? 

A living wage is the road to the only righteous re- 
construction possible and it must be made the first 
charge upon industry, and not until that question is 
settled may the question of dividends be considered. 
Such a program would forever settle the question of 
strikes, and would disband every commonwealth army 
as soon as it was being organized. 

The old Roman law said: "A man has a right to do 
with his own what he pleases." The new interpretation 
of property rights says, "The bounty of nature was 
created for all, and no man has a right to curb or de- 
stroy this fundamental right of society." The Christian 
doctrine of ownership is stewardship. Every man or 
woman who performs a function in the organization of 
industry, the lord of the land, the tenant, the master- 
craftsman, the journeyman, the apprentice, renders to 
society a special service. For that service he has special 
rights. These rights extend to the bounty of the earth, 
and no man has a right to dispute them. 

Will any man still insist that a minimum of state 
regulation means a maximum of freedom to the indi- 
vidual? This doctrine is false in theory and false in 
practice. Political and legal freedom are not a sufficient 
safeguard to the welfare of the individual in these 
times of organized power. The power that a perfect 
freedom gives exposes a man and his family to the 
exactions of a heartless competitive system that knows 
no moderation. The history of the nineteenth century 
as it relates to the wage system furnishes overwhelming 



156 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

proof of the wisdom and the necessity of a government- 
fixed minimum wage. Until recently only a few econ- 
omists have been found that would favor a wage by 
law, but at this time there are many of the best thinkers 
in America who insist that it is the only solution to 
this perplexing problem. We have ventured to apply a 
minimum wage to women and to children, but we have 
not yet extended that principle to adult male laborers. 

Every unbiased observer today realizes that an under- 
paid worker can be lifted out of his condition of pov- 
erty only by some method of legal enactment for his 
protection. 

We are ready to assert that the state is morally bound 
to compel employers to pay a living wage, and it must 
be promptly put in force by appropriate legislation. 

But we must not forget that a minimum wage places 
upon the back of labor a new obligation. It is the obli- 
gation to assure to the employer a just return for that 
living wage. Nothing less than this would appeal to the 
justice of the demand for a living wage, and nothing 
less would be advocated or tolerated. If organized labor 
can ever hope to win and hold an honorable place in 
the hearts of the American people they must frown 
upon any attempt to render less than the most efficient 
service in return for the living wage that is demanded, 
and this must be safeguarded by the labor organiza- 
tions before they can have any right to legal protection 
from the state. 

What would such a law do? It would improve indus- 
trial conditions; it would put into the hearts of labor 
a new hope — the hope that springs eternal in the human 
breast; it would remove the plague spots of our cities; 
it would divide the number of divorces by two ; it would 
remove the necessity for child labor, and put these inno- 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 157 

cent victims of our wage system into the schools; it 
would be the beginning of a program of home-building 
that would solve the problem of tenancy ; it would close 
the doors of our legalized usurers, and destroy the busi- 
ness of the dollar-a-week men in our cities who have 
fattened on the God-given hunger for the good things 
of life that have been sold to them at a hundred per 
cent of profit and an almost certain failure of final title 
to the goods; it would bring the employers of labor to 
consider Christian ethics, instead of modern day busi- 
ness ethics, in their treatment and employment of labor; 
in short, it would lay the foundation of righteousness 
and justice as the first principle of an enduring indus- 
trial peace in the world. 

In the discussion of the question as it relates to labor, 
we have covered the question as it relates to the labor- 
ers for wages on the farms, but we must still discuss 
that all-important question as it relates to the produc- 
tion of the raw materials of agriculture. 

Because this question so vitally touches the very 
foundations of civilized society, we approach it with 
more than ordinary misgivings. Price as it relates to 
the farmers of this nation is the last word in the prob- 
lem of industrial peace. For more than fifty years the 
unorganized, unprotected farmers have been the victims 
of that heartless combination of men known as "The 
Board of Trade," "The Wheat Pit," and "The Bucket 
Shop," of Chicago. The}^ have petitioned congress, they 
have plead with political parties, but their appeals have 
never been heeded. For more than twenty-five years 
they have charged that under the operation of this or- 
ganization the price of wheat has been regulated in 
such a manner as to force it down while the tenant 
farmers and those in immediate need of money were 



158 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

obliged to sell. By some unseen power of regulation 
they have been able to realize immense fortunes on their 
futures in the autumn and in some instances, single in- 
dividuals have been credited with reaping more profit 
in a single season than all the farmers of a great state 
could realize from a year's crop. The farmers are cry- 
ing out for relief from the power of the gamblers in the 
foodstuffs of the people. 

The power of these gamblers has not been seriously 
questioned for fifty years. It has been called every un- 
savory name known to the vocabulary of the politicians 
who every four years go about telling the people how 
to save the country, but there has never been a single 
enactment of congress that even raised a hope in the 
hearts of the American farmers that something tangible 
was about to be done. 

When a public service corporation finds its business 
unprofitable it cries out to the courts for relief, and the 
courts respond by raising the rates they may charge the 
people for service. When the farmers complain that 
their farming operations are not remunerative, they are 
fed on that old story of overproduction. It is hard to 
make them understand that if the courts have the right 
to protect the corporation in keeping rates high enough 
to bring a remunerative return on the investment, they 
cannot have relief from the same unfortunate condition. 

You may talk of the regulation of that powerful com- 
bination of grain gamblers, but there is only one remedy 
that will bring to the farmers of this nation any per- 
manent relief, and that remedy is to be found in a guar- 
anteed, standardized minimum price for the products 
of the farm. That price should be high enough to in- 
sure to every farmer a fair value for every day's labor 
entering into the raising of a bushel of standard wheat. 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 159 

This price must be ascertained by the method of the 
price-plus. 

We would not at this time advocate a minimum price 
on all the products of the farm, but we would advocate 
a minimum price on every bushel of wheat and on every 
pound of cotton and sugar that the farmers of the na- 
tion brought into existence of standards, approved for 
storage, by the government. 

We are aware that this is a new doctrine, but we in- 
vite the most thoughtful and candid consideration of 
the entire problem as we try in a very crude manner to 
make it clear. 

Another thought must be considered in the question 
of stabilization by standardization of the price of these 
essential farm products. It has been thought by some 
that this great nation extending as it does from the 
Great Lakes on the north to the Gulf of Mexico on the 
south, and from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific 
on the west, is in little danger of a shortage of the 
products of the farm essential to the life of the people. 
This may be true, but we must not forget that the only 
unit from which a wise nation can consider the peace 
and security of mankind in these days is the whole 
world. Every community of the Old World is at this 
time overcrowded. Scarcely a single nation of the Old 
World can produce enough of the essentials of life for 
the support of its people. It has been said that if the 
breadstuffs were withheld from England for thirty days 
a condition of starvation would face its people. 

This nation cannot live alone. It cannot forget its 
obligations to humanity. It did not forget them in a 
time of war, and in the past it has remembered them in 
times of peace. It is true that at this moment we are 
living in an attitude of isolation, and following out a 
defiant policy that refuses to consider any other unit of 



1 60 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

peace than our national unit of super-dominance, but 
would any wise husbandman think for a moment of 
closing his eyes to the possibility of a national disaster 
such as any reasoning man must admit might come to 
this nation in the shape of a shortage of breadstuffs or 
the raw material for the clothes to keep us warm? 

Our country has never considered this question from 
that standpoint, but the time has come for just such a 
consideration, and the reasons as well. The first reason 
for such a consideration is the possibility of some future 
calamity, either in this nation or in the world that 
would compel us to face a shortage of breadstuffs. For 
this reason, if for no other, we should take steps to pro- 
vide for such an emergency. 

How could this be done? We will answer. With an 
annual surplus of wheat this nation is simply living 
from hand to mouth. No provision has ever been made 
for the storage of enough of our annual bread crop to 
feed the nation for one year, if such a calamity were to 
befall us. We would provide enough great terminal 
elevators for the storage of wheat at points easily ac- 
cessible to the grain sections of the country, and then 
we would store enough of our surplus wheat every year 
to provide for any shortage that might occur. To pro- 
vide for storing this wheat we would standardize the 
minimum price of number one and number two wheat, 
and at that price we would fill these elevators every 
year at the minimum price so fixed. If the fixed mini- 
mum price failed to purchase sufficient wheat for stor- 
age, we would raise the price to a point that would 
bring the wheat, if there was a surplus of wheat above 
the nation's needs. When a new crop was assured, we 
would sell the stored wheat whenever it would bring a 
price that would reimburse the government for the 
money paid, or we would hold it for another year. 



INDUSTRIAL PEACE 16L 

A standardized price for wheat would mean that when 
the farmers planted they would be obliged to take only 
the hazards of the season. This nation would never 
again be disgraced by ungodly gambling in the sweat 
of human toil, for this is the only effective solution to 
the crime of gambling in wheat. 

In the same manner we would standardize the great 
cotton and sugar crops of the nation, and thus protect 
the labor that goes into the production of these necessi- 
ties of our lives, necessities so essential to the comfort 
and happiness of the human family. 

Let no man assert that this undertaking is too great 
for this government. The amount of money needed to 
store every bushel of the surplus wheat, and this is all 
that we would think of storing, would simply be negli- 
gible. Every bushel of wheat and every pound of flour 
exported in 1920 was only $306,000,000. Our exports of 
cotton goods amounted to $364,000,000 and our exports 
of raw cotton amounted to the sum of $1,381,000,000. 

Standardization of the price of both wheat and cotton 
would raise the price in the markets of the world, our 
farmers would be the beneficiaries, and we would simply 
be encouraging the manufacture of the surplus cotton 
and then instead of selling raw cotton, we would send 
to the markets of the world the finished product. 

We have already stated that labor is fundamental in 
the affairs of the world. Industrial peace can never 
come to this country, nor can it come to the world, until 
the right to labor and the right to a living wage shall be 
realized by every citizen of the Republic. The Christian 
conscience of this nation will never be at rest until the 
problems of labor are settled in a manner so righteous 
to all concerned as to merit the approval of all people 
and of God. 

12 



162 BVTLDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Is someone about to say that we already have legal 
means of settling the disputes between capital and labor 
and there is nothing left to do? Nothing could be far- 
ther from the truth than this statement. As I write 
there is impending one of the greatest conflicts between 
these great economic forces that has ever been staged in 
the history of the world. While these forces are agitat- 
ing their theories of adjustments, the people, that great 
third party to every controversy between capital and 
labor, who in every struggle have borne the burdens of 
the conflict, as well as the losses in money and time, are 
still crying out for some righteous solution to this prob- 
lem that for a century has so ruthlessly disturbed the 
industrial world and kept business unsettled. 

There is only one remedy that gives promise of bring- 
ing industrial peace, and that remedy is to be found in 
the standardization of every grade of employment that 
can be exploited by the competitive system, by fixing a 
minimum wage. 

There is only one way to crush the bucket shops in 
their skillful speculation and manipulation of the food- 
stuffs of the world, and the cotton products of the south- 
land, and that way is through a standardization of the 
price of these commodities. 

In a spirit of righteousness a minimum wage can be 
fixed that will bring to the wage laborers of the nation 
perfect security, and at the same time forever settle the 
strikes that have so long disturbed the peace of the 
world. 

Just as certainly as the nations of the world must 
find some way to settle contentions and disputes that 
threaten war, just as certainly the industrial peace of 
the world must be secured before industrial peace can 
come to this nation. 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 163 

Chapter X 

THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 

Among the many unsolved problems of this nation 
and its twentieth century civilization is the problem of 
our congested centers of national life. 

Populations amassed in great centers cannot live in 
obscurity. They must stand out as the centers from 
which must radiate the best and the worst of our civili- 
zation. They are indeed the battlegrounds and, in a 
great measure, the determining factors of our moral 
progress. 

Congestion of peoples in large centers has been a 
marked tendency of all history. It has not been con- 
fined to christian nations, but they have been found as 
well in the teeming populations of Ninnevah, Babylon, 
Carthage, Syracuse, and Rome. 

History teaches us that highly civilized countries have 
furnished the greatest centralization of population, and 
this has been accelerated with every year of advance of 
our complex civilization. 

These large aggregations of population have been the 
most remarkable in this country, because our inhabitants 
have been spreading out into great expanses of new ter- 
ritory, organizing new communities, building new cities, 
but in spite of all the wonderful growth of the cities of 
the world, ours has been more wonderful than the cities 
in the countries of the Old World. 

But the increase in city population as compared with 
the increase in country population has been phenominal, 
and it has been the greatest concern of the economists 
of our times. 



164 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

At the opening of this century only six communities 
of 8,000 population and over were registered in the 
cities, and at this time in several states the city popula- 
tion far outnumbers the country, while in the entire 
country it is estimated that it will reach and may far 
exceed 60 per cent. 

The increase in city population in the last decade has 
been alarming. New York City increased in the last 
decade more than 39 per cent; Detroit increased 60 per 
cent; Passaic New York increased 90 per cent; Los 
Angeles increased 201 per cent, while Oklahoma City 
increased over five hundred per cent. 

Increase in the population of our cities is not the only 
concern. A greater concern is the increase in the foreign 
population. Not only has the foreign population greatly 
increased, but far more alarming is its set determination 
to collect in the great commercial centers. 

In New Egnland alone, as far back as 1910, they had 
in the cities one million eight hundred sixty-five thou- 
sand nine hundred ninety-three foreign born, and born 
of foreign parents, and at the same time in the rural 
districts of the same class only one hundred eighty-six 
thousand eight hundred sixteen, and in the New England 
states the ratio of foreign citizens in the cities as com- 
pared to the country was ten to one. 

In every section of this country a large per cent of 
the population of the larger cities is made up of foreign- 
ers, and in some instances it totals more than seventy- 
five per cent of the entire population. 

These conditions are true only in America. In the old 
world no such condition exists. The city problem is not 
one of theirs. Their populations are homogeneous. 
They speak the same language. They have the same 
ideals. They honor the same flag, and this renders the 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 165 

problem of their governments more simple. In London, 
the second city of the world, only 2 per cent of the 
people were born outside the British Isles. 

But the worst is not yet told. The foreign popula- 
tions of which we speak come from every country on 
earth. As we scan the pages of history we are unable 
to read of any nation so exposed to the perils of an un- 
assimilated foreign population as that to which this na- 
tion is exposed at this time, and this is rendered the 
more dangerous because this force is so concentrated as 
to render it more effective. 

What a polygot of population! I ask, "Can the old 
world subjects be transformed into new world citizens 
under the conditions we have just related? Can we 
assimilate these subjects of old world misrule, or must 
we be assimilated by them?" 

These questions suggest a phase of our national life 
that deserves our most patriotic consideration. Not next 
year, but NOW. 

I have pointed out the alarming increase in the city 
population and I have called attention to the fact that a 
large per cent of that increase is foreigners, but I now 
wish to call to the attention of America the alarming 
peril that today threatens this country in the political 
power in these cities made up so largely of unassimilated 
foreigners. Have we not come to understand that the 
cities of our country have come to be the very touch- 
stone and the Gordian knot of the government? Our 
cities are assuming alarming proportions, and they are 
bringing to the people grave perplexities. 

"The city has always been the center of all the great 
aggregations of wealth. Business is its god. All men 
are its constituents, if they are within its reach. Its 
unity of purpose is unbroken, and its identity of inter- 



166 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

ests is complete. It is the center of commercial power. 
It is the home of that great throng of restless, roving, 
adventurous class of needy, greedy men and women who 
have come there to shun the light of public gaze. In 
the walls of the modern city are the concentrated vices 
of the world. Within its borders, crime multiplies and 
thrives, gambling hells nourish unnoticed, lechery runs 
riot, and the slums and babels of confusion beat back 
law and order, while poverty and wretchedness are a 
stench in the nostrils of the world, and a disgrace to our 
civilization." 

If the city is, as has been suggested, the battleground 
of our civilization and religion, then we must emphasize 
the necessity for safeguards. We must come to under- 
stand that these aggregations of un- Americanized for- 
eigners that exert their influence in the city to the city's 
peril, also make that influence felt in the government of 
the state, and through the state the same influence 
reaches into the nation. 

Just what -is that power at this time? In ancient 
history Ninnevah was a synonym for Assyria, Athens 
for Greece, Rome for Italy, and their civilizations rose 
and fell with them, but in America where the laws are 
the expression of the mind of the people, their domi- 
nence is most mercenan^. 

Must we be compelled to say in America, "All roads 
lead to New York,'- as they said in Italy "All roads 
lead to Rome?" Must the people of Illinois say, "All 
roads lead to Chicago," and must every state in the 
Union be compelled to say, "All roads lead to the me- 
tropolis," Is self-interest to rule the state through the 
power of the cities to control the law-making bodies of 
the state. If the cities of the state even hold the bal- 
ance of power at the polls, what is to hinder them from 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 167 

casting their votes together to accomplish any given 
purpose. 

Well may the question be asked, "What is the influ- 
ence of our cities in the state and in the nation?" That 
question cannot be answered until the people under- 
stand the power of that influence that has been wielded 
so many times in the political life of America we call 
"The balance of power." That influence is positive be- 
cause it can control election results. It is pernicious 
because it will not elect men who will forget personal 
interests, or interests of political groups, and make laws 
for the good of the entire community. 

For a century Bartholdi has stood in New York har- 
bor, beckoning to the oppressed of all nations to come 
to our shores and enjoy the " liberty that enlightens the 
world." The invitation has been accepted, and the 
teeming millions have flocked to our shores from every 
nation on earth. This is not the whole story. These 
foreigners have settled in great communities, both in 
city and country, speaking their native tongue and per- 
petuating the customs of the fatherland. Their children 
are raised in the environment of corruption and vice. 
Their churches have sent their ministers to establish 
schools for perpetuating the language as well as the re- 
ligion and the customs of the fatherland. So strong 
have these communities come to be that great papers 
have been established in America, printed in the lan- 
guage of these several nationalities, that go to them as 
exponents of their interpretation of liberty and freedom 
and the right promised by "Religious Liberty" under 
our constitution and our laws. Their schools have been 
established where their language and their religion have 
been taught, and out of these schools the population is 
being swelled not only by new citizens trained in the 



168 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

ideals of the fatherland, but sometimes new citizens 
taught to rebel against the spirit of our American insti- 
tutions, instead of citizens schooled in a love of the 
liberty and freedom that was the inheritance of every 
American youth. 

Group political action is a crime against a free gov- 
ernment, but when the groups represent alignments of 
foreigners whose ideals of American life are the build- 
ing up of communities of their own bloods and speaking 
their own language, and living up to their own ideals, 
and obeying the laws that they endorse, and disobeying 
those that in their conception seem to trample upon their 
ideas of what is meant by freedom and liberty, then it 
is time America awaken and make plain that this great 
free nation cannot be foreignized by any grouping of 
foreigners. No little Bohemias or Germanys or any other 
foreign group should be permitted to mar the land- 
scapes of America or to disturb its moral or social life 
by trying to bring with them to this nation to be 
planted upon our free soil anything that is even flavored 
with an un-American spirit. 

Out of these conditions in our cities came the two 
great contending forces we call capital and labor. In- 
dividual capital disappeared in the great corporations 
and individual labor in the trade union. Both organ- 
ized for protection. What does all this mean? Force 
against force. Capital for profits, and labor for the 
right to live. Here again the problem of the city be- 
comes the problem of mankind, and it perplexes us. 

This is an awful picture of America as it is today. 
The menace that such a condition brings is not over- 
drawn. We must impress upon the world that Amer- 
ican institutions demand American ideals, and that 
American ideals cannot be impressed in any foreign 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 169 

tongue. "America for Americans" must be the slogan 
of this generation, and we must make the world under- 
stand that when any foreigner comes to our shores, the 
moment he is under the jurisdiction of our courts and 
the protection of Old Glory, he must begin to qualify 
himself for citizenship in this great Republic. And not 
this alone. We must see to it that no man or woman 
is clothed with the right to vote, or otherwise exercise 
the rights of an American citizen, until he can do so in- 
telligently. This accomplished, the menace of the city 
would vanish like dews before a summer sun. 

Can we afford to allow the standards of American 
citizenship to be lowered by corruption in our cities or 
by the refusal of our foreign population to Americanize ? 
Again, is it safe to listen to the demands of foreigners 
upon any policy that we might pursue in our national 
affairs, when such demands are certain to represent un- 
American ideals? 

American voters beware. If the cities of a state can 
at this time dictate the policies of that state, such a 
power is a real peril. 

The moral standards of the city must be raised, and 
its voters must get the spirit of American institutions 
and show a disposition to give expression of that spirit 
in a righteous vote at the ballot box. 

Who can tell just what the power that we have called 
the "balance of power" is, as it is expressed in the state 
as well as in the nation? The commercial interests of 
the city are widely different from the interests of the 
small towns and the country. Suppose that in voting 
upon a given question the towns and cities of the state 
would decide to cast their votes for any contention of 
the city. Who would win? The question might be a 
question of the gravest moment, and the expression of 



110 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

the verdict so rendered might work to the harm of the 
entire nation. 

But attention to the government of the cities should 
be the first consideration. Everywhere the cities have 
been clamoring for Home Rule. They want to get from 
under the domination of the state in the making of the 
laws that govern them. In many of the states their ap- 
peals have been heard. The arguments for "Home Rule" 
sound well as they are sent out to the world, but just at 
this time this nation is getting a concrete example of the 
dangers of the principles of "Home Rule." Are the 
people not interested in the government of the great 
commercial centers where every transaction in the ex- 
change of the products of the rural communities must 
be effected? We sometimes forget that we should be 
vitally interested and we forget, too, that the influence 
the city is certain to exercise, either directly or indi- 
rectly, over us might be very prejudicial to our best 
interests, and because of this we must be alert and 
watchful that our protection may be made certain. 

The public opinion of the city is simply the mind of 
the city either expressed or seeking expression in law. 
This may be either good or bad, and in this way alone 
we can measure the real influence of the city upon the 
state. 

The commercialism of our time demands a "wide- 
open"city. What is a wide-open city ? A wide-open city 
simply means that the city government and the business 
interests must recognize the right of every enterprise 
within its jurisdiction to prosper. The city invites busi- 
ness of every character from every quarter of the globe. 
It cannot deny the gamblers, the ward heelers, the pros- 
titutes, and the men who in these days of constitutional 
prohibition, the bootleggers, to settle within its borders. 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 171 

All these classes of undesirables help to elect the officers 
and dictate the policies of the modern city. 

Does anyone wonder that the modern city wants 
"Home Rule-'? Would the people of the state be justi- 
fied in concluding that the city of the future would be 
less dangerous to the morals of the people than the city 
of today? 

Are the people of the state interested in the govern- 
ment of our cities? Is not the average city a real men- 
ace to the morals of the young men of the state? Is it 
not a fact that a "wide open" city with its friendly 
police furnishes or winks at the gambling hells and 
houses of prostitution that ruin the innocent young 
manhood of the state and cheat them out of every dol- 
lar they may have in their possession? Do not our 
cities under constitutional prohibition boast of the fact 
that liquor is easy to those who know the combination, 
and do not the police wink at the crimes that must 
come under their observation every day and night? 

This nation must come to realize the peril of our 
cities, both from the standpoint of their political power 
as well as their disposition and determination to disre- 
spect the laws of their country. 

"Home Rule" is the child of the agitation for the 
"wide-open" city, and the wide-open city is the home of 
more crime and more criminals than disgrace all the 
balance of the states outside the cities. 

What is the influence of the cities in the election of 
the officers of the state and especially those officers who 
are charged with the making of our laws? I assert 
again that its influence is both positive and pernicious. 
It is positive because it is so organized as to control 
votes, and it is pernicious because it will not elect men 
who will vote for laws that make for the uplift of the 
people. 



172 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Upon this point Theodore Roosevelt, who was during 
his life perhaps the best qualified authority upon this 
question, speaking of the menaces of the city to the 
government before the Congregational Club of New 
York City, said: "In any attempt to reform them by 
law we would find nine-tenths of the city members in 
the legislature hostile. The only hope of reform lies in 
the country members. The average grade of our poli- 
ticians is a menace to good government. Four-fifths of 
the members elected as representatives from New York 
and Brooklyn can be depended upon to vote on the 
wrong side of every question." 

But the menace of the city in the life of this republic 
is still more far-reaching than its influence in govern- 
ment such as we have pointed out. In the city we find 
the great aggregations of wealth. Wealth is power. It 
is labor stored up in portable form. It is a charged 
battery of social force. It holds the power to command 
labor. In every form it is organized, and its influence 
is felt in factories, whose wheels and spindles are today 
doing the work that only a few years ago must be done 
by the hands of men. 

The great aggregations of people in the cities are 
there to work. They came to America with false im- 
pressions of the meaning of liberty as we know it in 
American life. To them it has meant license instead of 
liberty under the law. This is the most dangerous force 
in the Republic today, and a thousand times more dan- 
gerous because of the organized power of the cities in 
every state to control elections. 

Do the people not yet understand how vital to Amer- 
ican life and American ideals is the question of Amer- 
icanization? Do they not understand that if these for- 
eign elements can so dominate the elections in cities as 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 173 

to get control in our legislatures, its pernicious influence, 
might write laws that would imperil our civilization 
and set it back a hundred years? 

Have we not come to know the dangers of "wide- 
open" cities and "wide-open" saloons? Is the eighteenth 
amendment to our constitution to be held in such dis- 
respect in our cities as to bring the blush of shame to 
liberty-loving, law-abiding citizens? The spirit of 
Home Rule and the "wide-open" city are standing today 
in open defiance of our constitution. 

We must Americanize. The government of every city 
in our land must be made to understand that the con- 
stitution must be respected, and the laws must be obeyed, 
whether they measure up to the city's ideals or not. 

There is in America today a general contempt for 
law, and in our cities that contempt is showing its spirit 
in such bold defiance as to belittle the authority that 
created it and render it a sham and a counterfeit. Lax- 
ity and delays in administration have bred in the public 
mind a spirit of the most vicious contempt of law. We 
have emphasized man's rights and ignored his duties. 
Society, in its wild debauch of freedom, is throwing its 
heritage to the winds and turning its drunken debauch 
into darkness. The very foundations of the primitive 
institutions of mankind, like the church, and the school, 
and the family, and the state, have been shaken, and are 
trembling between restitution by rebuilding and ruin by 
stagnation. 

Where is all this lawlessness to end? Must we forget 
the city in our moral calculations, or shall we bring that 
spirit of lawlessness to its knees, and build in these 
"Sodoms and Gomorrows" new ideals, and a new life? 
The city's atmosphere of vile odors must be cleansed, 
and the cities of our nation must be made to understand 



174 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

that the eighteenth amendment as an important part of 
the law of the land must be enforced in a spirit of 
American patriotism. 

Will anyone say that the eighteenth amendment was 
not intended for complete enforcement? Was that 
amendment, written into our constitution after a cen- 
tury of bitter contention, intended simply to apply to 
the poor man, while the rich and the powerful go scot- 
free? Is the much-talked-of law enforcement to apply 
only to the poor man, while a rich offender with thou- 
sands of dollars worth of liquor in his cellar is per- 
mitted to go free? 

This cannot be. A double standard of law enforce- 
ment in this country will never be tolerated. The same 
law that brings a poor man into court must apply itself 
with equal vigor and with the same honesty to the rich, 
and there must be no camaflouge to deceive the people. 

What is said here does not simply apply to the en- 
forcement of the eighteenth amendment, but it must also 
apply to the enforcement of all laws that every day 
must be enforced against the rich and the poor. 

How long can the contending forces in America con- 
tinue to contend for mastery? When will the people 
come to understand that the questions raised by these 
forces are not questions for the city alone, but questions 
in which the entire country is vitally interested? 

When will America awaken to the fact that an un- 
Americanized population is a menace to our republic? 
When will they analyze the power of the organized 
cities, and the dangers that are made possible through 
the large aggregations of foreigners within their gates? 

The world war brought to the American mind a real 
awakening on the problem of Americanization. We 
have drifted along for years seeking political advantage 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 175 

through group political action. Everybody knows that 
the threat of political action has forced both the domi- 
nant political parties into the gravest errors. No party 
has been free from its influences. It has exchanged 
promises of special privileges for the votes of groups 
both racial and commercial, and thus aided in solidify- 
ing the foreign vote for things that were not in accord 
with our American ideals. 

Group alignments for political power are wrong. No 
man who will give his sanction to the demands of special 
groups should be allowed to sit in any legislative body 
in a republic. Men who are not big enough to get the 
vision of an entire nation and to cast their votes inde- 
pendent of any alignment or promise are not worthy a 
seat in any legislative body in the republic. 

We have said some plain words about the cities, and 
about the foreigners within their gates and their refusal 
to Americanize. What we have said does not relate to 
Americanized foreigners whose citizenship and patriotism 
have ever been above reproach, but it does relate to those 
communities where, being overwhelmingly foreign, those 
groups are able and determined to impress their lan- 
guage and their customs upon the communities where 
they have such power. 

We have given the industrious foreigners from every 
country a royal welcome to our shores. We have seen 
their teeming multitudes flock to our shores to find 
homes out on the great undeveloped prairies of the west, 
and they have brought with them a splendid spirit of 
honesty, industry and thrift. They left their homes in 
the old world and found new homes on the free soil of 
America. They built here their happy homes. They 
prospered in this land of opportunity. They left the 
fatherland to make homes in free America, because thev 



116 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

loved our liberty and our freedom. Nothing could have 
been more natural than that kindred peoples in a for- 
eign land would segregate themselves into communities 
and then that they should speak the language of the 
fatherland. They loved America. They loved its insti- 
tutions. They loved it because they knew that here they 
could make homes for their children, after they had 
passed away. 

No patriotic American will unjustly judge his brother 
because of his ancestry, but the foreigners within our 
gates must be generous enough to know that in a foreign 
land they owe a certain deference and an unquestioned 
patriotism to the land of their adoption. 

Foreigners! This is your adopted country. You 
must never forget that. The liberties you enjoy and the 
opportunities that have been yours have come to you by 
the grace of our free institutions, and we have a right 
to demand that you help us to keep the doors of Amer- 
ican opportunity open for your children and for ours. 
You must get the spirit of American ideals. You must 
learn to speak and read our language. You must learn 
that the liberties of which we are so proud cannot 
license wrong. You must help us to make America in 
fact what it has so long been in name, "The land of the 
free and the home of the brave." 

Foreigners! You cannot show your good faith and 
your undying patriotism in a way that will bring you 
into more friendly relations with your American broth- 
ers than to adopt, and not antagonize American ideals. 
This nation cannot be foreignized. Old Glory must con- 
tinue to wave over a people in full sympathy with every 
ideal of America, and when any foreigner finds himself 
out of sympathy with those ideals he should immediately 
emigrate to the country whose ideals he loves. 



THE PERIL OF AMERICAN CITIES 171 

Cities of America ! You have enjoyed great prosper- 
ity. Your wealth has increased until it is phenominal. 
Your political and commercial power is indeed great. 
Your industrial problems are complex. You have 
boasted that jonr prosperity was an index to the pros- 
perity of the state and the nation. This should not be 
true. The real prosperity of a country should be re- 
flected in the splendor of its great agricultural districts, 
in the beauty of their homes, and in the contentment 
that should be reflected in the permanency and beauty 
of those homes and their home life. 

The cities of this nation must be reminded that their 
problems are not the problems of the great cities of the 
world. The population of our cities represent an amal- 
gamation of the populations of the world. The ideals 
of government and the conceptions of freedom are here 
contending for mastery. The greatest danger in the 
American city, and we may say as well in the entire 
nation, is disregard and disobedience of the law. Must 
this nation be compelled to apologize for an absolute 
disrespect for law in our cities? Let us beware. If a 
republic can hope to live it must respect the laws of the 
state under which it lives. Here again the American 
city must face the problem of the foreign population. 
There is onty one solution to the problem of our foreign 
populations, and the solution to that problem is to be 
found in a speedy compulsory Americanization of every 
foreigner the moment he comes to our shores. When we 
have accomplished this in every section of America we 
will be able to see the beginning of a real christian 
democracy, and not till then. 



13 



178 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 



Chapter XI 
THE PEOBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 

OR 

THE HANDICAP OF POVERTY 

I ask the young men of America, what promises have 
you of a start in life? After you have lived your first 
twenty-one years under the parental roof, after you 
have reached your majority, and are ready to go out 
into the world to make a place for yourself, will your 
father be able to give you a few hundred dollars and a 
father's blessing, or will you be obliged to start at the 
bottom without a cent? If you have an education, you 
ought to be proud of it, and you ought to thank your 
parents for this much of a start in life, but much as 
you will need an education, if you are not schooled in 
some technical work you will find it no small task to 
apply it to the earning of a living. If you have secured 
a technical education, you are fitted to begin life at a 
fixed salary. This will mean that you must work for 
someone at a price that will be fixed by him, and even 
though your wages are good, you will soon discover that 
after your living is paid, little will be left. You will 
hope for the day when you may have enough to start a 
little home of your own, where you can bring a bride to 
be its queen. This is God's way of life and it is right, 
but how soon will you be ready to start that home? 
Will it be this year, or will you have to wait another 
before you will feel that you are ready to assume the re- 
sponsibilities of the head of a family? Aye, you are 
waiting for that time. You have not succeeded in lay- 
ing b}^ enough to marry, and your prospective bride is 
waiting, too. 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 119 

How different is your condition from your school 
friend John Jones. At his majority his father was able 
to take him into his business worth half a million dol- 
lars. He built a splendid home for his bride, and is 
comfortably settled in life. You are beginning to 
philosophize on the doctrine of ownership. The handi- 
cap of poverty is a real yoke upon your neck, and when 
you see John and his happy bride, surrounded by all the 
comforts and luxuries of life, when you compare his 
condition with yours, you would not be human if you 
did not feel that the fates that compelled you to begin 
at the bottom, while your old school friend was able to 
start with a comfortable fortune, was an unfair handi- 
cap at the very beginning of the race of life. You have 
run many a race in your school days, but you never 
entered a race with such a handicap as this. 

But this is not all the good fortune that awaits John. 
He starts well in the race, but he can look ahead, secure 
in the promise of a rich inheritance when his father 
passes away. You have been born in the environment 
of poverty, he in the environment of wealth and luxury. 
To you, life is a struggle from the beginning; to John, 
it is a path strewn with roses from the day he assumes 
manhood's estate until the end of life. 

What is this handicap doing for the human family? 
It is driving our young men away from the responsi- 
bilities of home building, and it is compelling young 
womanhood to seek fields of remunerative employment 
for self-support, instead of finding a place as the mother 
and queen of a happy home. 

It is doing more than this. Every year the handicap 
is becoming greater. Every year the doors of oppor- 
tunity are being closed to a larger number of our youth 
than were closed the year before. Every year the han- 



180 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

dicap of poverty is fixing new obstacles to the getting 
of a start in life, as well as keeping it after it has once 
been in your possession. 

We have boasted that this is a land of opportunity. 
At a time in our history this boast was one of which 
every American might well be proud, but today, in the 
face of our brutal commercialism, our industrial graft- 
ing, and our tribute-levying trusts, opportunity for the 
man who must start at the bottom is forever lost, unless 
radical changes are made in our system. 

But why bemoan a fate the remedy for which lies at 
our very door? Let us again open the doors of oppor- 
tunity so wide, and fasten them so firmly to the walls of 
eternal truth, that never again in our history can they 
be closed against the honest toilers of the land. 

Are you asking, "How can this be done?" Listen, ye 
toilers of the land ! This nation's wealth is of your 
own creation. If any man claims more of it than lie 
could earn by honest toil, and honest effort, his claim is 
without an element of justice. The law of ownership 
as it is written in the ethics of God's eternal truth will 
not permit a man to have more of this world's goods 
than he can earn, nor more than he can use if he lives a 
righteous life. 

Thinking men today agree that the first step in the 
direction of a solution to the problem of over-riches is 
some lawful means of restoring to the people the vast 
fortunes that have been extorted from them by special 
privileges. I said, "lawful means," for the laws have 
ever respected the right of a child to inherit whatever 
property the parent leaves at his death, but we must ask 
whether in the light of the large fortunes that today 
seem to threaten the very life of this republic, is it not 
time we began to question the right of inheritance and 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 181 

the wisdom of a policy of allowing large estates to re- 
main in the ownership of one family? Yes, the time 
has come when this question must be considered by the 
economists of this nation, and the question of the dis- 
position of these vast accumulations of wealth must be 
settled in such a manner as to consider, not only the 
rights of those who under our present laws claim them, 
but also from the broader and more humane claims of 
the public who have done the manual labor to produce 
the wealth. 

"Nothing is implied in property," says John Stuart 
Mills, "but the right of each to his or her own faculties, 
to what he can produce by them, and to whatever he 
can get for them in a fair market." It follows, there- 
fore, that "Although the right of bequest or gift after 
death forms part of the idea of property, the right of 
inheritance, as distinguished from bequest does not." 
Bequest in a primitive state of society was seldom recog- 
nized, but the feudal family has long passed. Property 
is now inherent in individuals, not in families. The 
parent has the right, the power under the law, to dis- 
inherit his own children and leave his fortune to 
strangers. 

The reason assigned by modern society for giving the 
property of a person who dies intestate to the children 
or relatives is the supposition that in doing so the law 
is more likely than in any other way to do what the 
proprietor would have done. 

But the conditions that prevailed at the time of Mr. 
Mills, are not the conditions that prevail at this time 
as they relate to property, the ownership of which was 
not disputed. At this time we are facing the problem 
of untold millions, which represent the accumulations, 
not of honest effort, but of special privilege, and organ- 



182 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

ized commercial exploitation. The right of any man to 
own these great fortunes is questioned, and the right to 
hand such fortunes down by inheritance to future gen- 
erations, even of one's own blood, is a right that this 
generation must consider in the light of the fundamental 
laws of truth and right. 

Mr. Mills said upon this subject, "The right of no one 
should be permitted to acquire by inheritance more than 
the amount of a moderate independence!" And again, 
"In case of intestacy, the whole propert}^ should escheat 
to the state." 

Upon this proposition, progressive thinkers would 
grant no right to an heir by bequest that they would 
not grant to the heir of an intestate, and this is right. 
The child's right, if he has any, is a right to receive, 
and not an inherent right in the property itself. 

An authority of note says, "The right of a man to 
dispose of his property during his life cannot be sep- 
arated from the property itself, but the right to dispose 
of it by will, or descent, taking effect after death is not 
so closely related with the right of property, and the 
right to tax it is a right that cannot be questioned. 
This right has been exercised by all the states of the 
Union except five, and the state constitutions specifically 
refer to the right." The authority to assess an inherit- 
ance tax is not questioned by the courts, nor is the au- 
thority to graduate the tax, charging a higher rate upon 
large estates than upon smaller ones. 

But the people are asking some stubborn questions 
about their rights under the constitution and the laws, 
as they relate to property and its inheritance. Up to 
this time the courts have not been asked for the author- 
itj' to assess upon estates more than a small tax, but the 
people want to know whether a man has a right, from 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 183 

an economic standpoint of right relations among men, 
to hand down to his children all the vast wealth he may 
be able to accumulate under our system of commercial 
exploitation. 

Upon this question the courts are speaking some very 
plain words. From Blackmore and Bancroft, the new- 
est and most exhaustive treatise on the laws of inherit- 
ance and their taxation in recent years, we quote the 
following: "Firmly entrenched in a long and honorable 
history, with the endorsement of the leading economists 
of ancient and modern times, and with the approval of 
the present practise of the most enlightened govern- 
ments, he would be brave indeed who should attempt to 
attack the theory or validity of any sane inheritance tax 
from the economic standpoint. From an economic stand- 
point no tax has more to commend it, and none is easier 
to defend, as has been well said. It does not touch 
private property during the life of the owner, and thus 
places no burden upon business activities. It is easily 
ascertained through the probate court. It invades no 
natural right. It violates no maxims of the law. It 
overlaps no constitutional barriers. It is neither revolu- 
tionary nor socialistic, but on the contrary is a measure 
of political wisdom and social justice and has been truly 
styled an institution of democracy. It cannot be shifted 
to other shoulders. Its collection is certain and econom- 
ical. It falls upon wealth alone. It does not take what 
a taxpayers has, but what he is to get." 

The beneficiaries of inheritance, the men and women 
who by reason of birth are about to possess the accumu- 
lations of a lifetime of another, cry out against any 
form of inheritance taxation by denying the right of the 
government to lay a special burden on capital. They 
say, "Such a tax will diminish the nation's wealth." 



184 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

They complain "That it is a tax on widows and orphans 
and that it will discourage industry and drive capital 
out of the country." They say also "That it is confisca- 
tion, extortion, and a dangerous step toward commun- 
ism," but the people are stubbornly insisting that mod- 
ern society and law are fixing new rules and new rela- 
tions .between the men who have large fortunes and the 
men who produce them. They insist that the state is a 
silent partner in the business of every citizen, and that 
when the partnership is dissolved by death, the silent 
partner has a right to a share of the capital." 

Thus it will be seen that there is no conflict at this 
time between the authorities on the right to levy an in- 
heritance tax, and the right to fix a higher rate upon 
large than upon small estates. If these rights exist, and 
if it is true, as we think it is, that inheritances are 
levied, not on the theory of any right to tax the man 
who has passed away, but on the right of an individual 
to receive property by inheritance, then the fundamental 
question to be settled must be, "How much property has 
a man a right to inherit under the economic laws of 
right between man and man, and between the citizen 
and the government?" 

Upon this question the Supreme Court of the United 
States has spoken in the following language: "Though 
the general consent of the most enlightened nations of 
the earth from the earliest historic period has recognized 
the right in the children to inherit the property of the 
parents, we know of no general principle to prevent the 
legislature from taking away, or limiting, the right of 
testamentary disposition, or imposing such conditions 
upon its exercise as it may deem conducive to the public 
good." Again it said, "Where logic and the policy of 
the state conflict with a fiction due to historic tradition, 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 185 

the fiction must give way." Following this argument 
further, we quote from the Supreme Court of South 
Dakota, in which it says: "It must be conceded that if 
the legislature can fix a rate of taxation, it can increase 
such rates, and upon grounds of public policy, it might 
place a limit in the value, above which all transmissions 
would go to the state." 

It will be seen that even the right to fix the amount 
that any individual might hand down to his legal heirs 
is within the authority' of the state or government, and 
there is onty one question left to be examined — the ques- 
tion of public policy. 

In the examination of this question the first thing to 
be considered is the right of inheritance. Has a man an 
inherent right to all the property of which his parents 
may die seized? 

At a time in our history this question would not have 
had the significance that attaches to it today. When 
estates represented only the legitimate earnings of men 
we would not think of questioning the right of a child 
to inherit the entire property of the parent, for an 
honest accumulation of wealth in the natural life of a 
man would never be great, but in these days when vast 
estates have been accumulated by special privilege laws, 
and are being handed down in many instances to people 
who never did a day's work to aid in -their production 
or accumulation, it is time we began to study the ques- 
tion from the standpoint of the nation's safety and wel- 
fare. 

We raise the question, "Has a man a right to be- 
queath to his heirs the great fortunes that have been 
amassed in this free country, through legally acquired 
special privilege and exploitation?" 

Before answering this question we want to assert that 



186 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

this generation is estimating the world by new rules. 
Fifty years ago greatness was measured by the rule of 
merit. Today every human value of the world has come 
to be measured by money. The commercial "Blue Book'' 
everywhere fixes the measure of a man by that single 
standard, money. A man's value by that book is esti- 
mated good or bad by his ability to pay a debt. Honor 
has a small place in the commercial world when an esti- 
mate is asked for. 

Nothing could be more unfortunate than that this 
dangerous tendency of the times should be encouraged 
to prevail. Wealth may be the result of some special 
opportunity. It may represent a systematic campaign 
of hard-bargaining. It may have been the result of 
some special privilege. It may have been handed down 
by inheritance, in which the beneficiary has given not a 
single personal effort in its creation. But no matter in 
what manner the wealth may have come to a man in 
these da} 7 s of single standard of measures, a wise judg- 
ment of men can never be marked out by the single 
standard of money and riches. 

The right of ownership of property has come to be 
one of the greatest problems that has engaged the wis- 
dom of any age, and this nation must give itself to the 
study of that problem. 

The right of ownership is not in every instance em- 
bodied in the possession of the property. The beauties 
of God's great creation in which we live is man's in- 
heritance. It was God's gift to Adam and through him 
to all the children of men. If any man claims more of 
it than he could earn, or more than he can use if he 
lives a righteous life, his title is bad. 

In the days of physical conquest the world readily 
discerned the need of protection of property by law, 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 187 

and governments wrote that protection into the consti- 
tutions. In those good old days, little thought had been 
given to the means by which property was acquired. 
There was no need for it, but at this time the great ac- 
cumulations of wealth raise new questions. In a thou- 
sand ways men have acquired fortunes that were not ac- 
quired by any code of morals that is recognized in the 
world today. 

The problem of over-riches is one of the most serious 
problems of this nation. If you point to a question of 
disturbed conditions in the commercial world today, it 
would be safe to look behind the disturbance to commer- 
cial exploitation for the real cause. 

The selfishness that has fastened itself upon society 
has been the underlying first cause of every war and of 
every revolution that has ever disgraced and despoiled 
the world. That spirit has built higher its monuments 
of wealth over the dead bodies of human toil, until the 
whole world is a human caldron of unrest and dis- 
content. 

Americans, we must halt in our scramble after the 
almighty dollar. The over-riches of this nation is a 
menace to the liberties of its people. Let us examine the 
great ledger balances and see for ourselves what the 
record will disclose. Only a few years ago, after a most 
stubborn fight in our congress, a law was passed making 
it the duty of those who were receiving incomes above a 
specified amount to pay a stipulated per cent of thai 
income to the government. This is known as the income 
tax. The men who contended for that law insisted that 
the burdens of government were falling largely upon the 
shoulders of the middle and poorer classes, and that the 
very rich, while greatly profiting by the splendid oppor- 
tunities the government offered for making:, or getting, 



188 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

money, were paying little if anything toward the sup- 
port of the government. The rich men of the nation 
fought this measure to the highest courts of the coun- 
try, but the law, after many exciting and uncertain de- 
lays, was finally declared in harmony with the constitu- 
tion. 

Under this law as it operated in 1920, twenty thousand 
residents of the United States reported incomes of over 
$50,000 each, and the world war added many hundred 
to the list. Ninety-five families in the same j^ear con- 
fessed to an annual income of $750,000 to $1,000,000. 
Twenty-eight men reported incomes of $2,000,000. There 
are sixteen thousand men with incomes of $50,000 to 
$750,000. Two men reported incomes amounting to 
$3,000,000 and more than four million nine hundred 
thousand men and firms are at this time paying incomes 
under sworn statements amounting to $5,000 or more. 
More than ninety-two per cent of the wealth of the en- 
tire nation is owned at this time by less than two per 
cent of the people. 

Only by comparison can we get the real meaning of 
this awful condition as the story is told by the nation's 
ledger. 

Less than five million men and firms out of the one 
hundred and five million people within the jurisdiction 
of our country are able to qualify for an income tax 
which fixes the lowest income that is taxable at $2,000. 
While this is true, it must be recorded that more than 
fifty million of the people of our country are at this 
time paying tax, if at all, on less than the legal exemp- 
tion from a judgment under execution, while the great 
middle classes, consisting of the other fifty million, are 
living along from year to year, many of whom are not 
able to lay by a cent for a rainy day. 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 189 

From the insurance actuaries, as well as from a gov- 
ernment report, we learn that only four men out of 
every hundred who die in the United States have a cent 
to leave to their families above the insurance they 
possess. 

What a record is this in a country of the greatest 
opportunities that have been offered to the human fam- 
ily. In the olden days of conquest it was done by war, 
by force, and the conquested nation was deprived of its 
hard-earned wealth by force of arms, but in these days 
of intellectual conquest it is done by special privileges 
and without the knowledge of the intended victim. 

The conquest of America has been quietly going on 
for more than fifty years, and that conquest was a de- 
liberately planned scheme to gather interest from the 
people. Is the conquest complete at this time? Are we 
right when we say that these stupendous mountains of 
wealth are a menace to our liberties? Will the Amer- 
ican people submit to this stealthy means of accumulat- 
ing the results of the toil of the million freemen in this 
land of the free without a murmur? I want to assert 
that this record of wealth made by our own government 
is a most significant symptom of the beginning of na- 
tional decay, for a nation, born to a heritage such as 
belongs to the men and women of America, still possess 
the spirit that actuated the fathers of this republic. 

But we must stop a moment. We have not told you 
the most alarming part of this story. A large per cent 
of the property represented by this awful octopus of 
wealth is in the form of interest-bearing obligations of 
the people, such as tax-free mortgages and other income 
properties. The interest on these vast accumulations of 
wealth amounts at this time to more than five billion 
dollars, and only a small part of that vast sum of human 



190 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

energy is paying a cent of tax in support of the govern- 
ment aside from the tax on the incomes it aids in mak- 
ing. This is not yet all. The national obligations at 
this time amount to more than twenty-four billion dol- 
lars and the obligations for future payment not other- 
wise considered will amount to more than one hundred 
billion dollars and to this vast sum we must add the 
annual premiums on life insurance policies amounting 
to more than forty-five billion dollars. And this is not 
yet all. In 1920 the government revenues amounted to 
a tax of forty-five dollars per capita and this would 
amount to more than two hundred dollars for every 
family of five. To this amount we must add not less 
than three hundred dollars for local taxes, bringing the 
grand total to five hundred and ninety-five dollars for 
the head of every family of five in the land. 

As we write, the papers are reporting that there are 
more than five million unemployed in the country, and 
more than fifty million more living at the very lifeline 
of existence. 

The President has called a council to consider the 
problem of unemployment. What is the problem of un- 
employment? Will this wise council consider more than 
to ascertain the fact of unemployment and advise indus- 
try to start the wheels moving? Will industry begin to 
build houses and make goods without a market for the 
goods nor people who can pay rent for the use of the 
houses? The President has asserted that the conference 
will not contemplate charity, or in other words, aid from 
the Federal government. I want to assert that the 
problem of unemployment will not be solved in this 
country until industrial peace shall have been realized, 
and industrial peace will never be realized until the 
handicap of the poverty that industrial exploitation and 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 191 

interest-gathering make possible shall be so regulated as 
to establish some system of righteousness in the world 
that will restore to the people the millions of wealth 
that at this time are sapping the very life of the nation 
through interest. The disease of which we are complain- 
ing at this time Ts not the disease of over-production, 
but the disease of under-consumption, and the remedy 
will be found, if at all, in a complete restoration of the 
government to the people and the establishment of that 
government upon sound principles of economic righteous- 
ness, instead of the selfishness that has built up uncurbed 
greed. 

Over-riches is the direct cause of the pitiful poverty 
and unemployment in this nation today. Debt is the 
nightmare of any man, and it is the nightmare of any 
nation. The conquest of this nation by its interest gath- 
erers is complete. What does it mean? It simply means 
that the nation's conquesters are masters, and the labor- 
ers of the nation are industrial slaves. And then what? 
Shall this great nation ignore the lessons of history, and 
begin a series of compromises as they did in the settle- 
ment of the slavery question? Have we not learned 
that history teaches by example, and that a nation that 
will not take heed to the lessons of history must pay 
the penalty? The world is crying out for a Garrison 
and a Wendell Phillips or a Harriet Beecher Stowe, be- 
cause they know that they were brave enough to strike 
at the root of an evil. Before the civil war they cried 
out "Slavery is a crime against God. Abolish it" That 
cry was an appeal to right a fundamental wrong. It 
was made by fearless men and women who knew the 
dangers of compromise upon a principle of right. Such 
men and women are the burning need of the world to- 
day. If they were here they would raise their patriotic 



192 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

voices in the new cry: "Over-riches is a menace to the 
liberties of a free people. No man in America can own 
and hold wealth that he did not earn and wealth that 
he cannot use while five million are without the right 
to labor for the bread of life. Restore these great 
fortunes to the people who earned them. The life of 
this nation is trembling between the only remedy for the 
wrong hj legal restitution or by disgraceful ruin." 

The children of Israel applied this remedy while they 
journeyed through the wilderness on their way to the 
land of Promise, and we must apply it as we journey 
toward the ideals of our forefathers. 

A National Fixed Inheritance 

The right of inheritance has been one of the most 
mooted questions of the laws of descent. Even at this 
time the rights of direct heirs as well as indirect heirs 
are respected by the law. Bequest has ever been re- 
spected by the law and the courts, even to the disregard 
of those who might have claimed had the decedent died 
intestate, but in these latter years the right of inheri- 
tance and the right of bequest have been questioned by 
the greatest students of economics. 

So new is the question of the right to inherit that 
timid people are asking for more light upon the entire 
subject. The people want to know whether restitution 
as it would be asked under a "fixed inheritance, tax" 
such as we propose would be lawful, and then when we 
answer that it is upheld by the highest court of the na- 
tion, they ask, "Is it right?" Answering this question, 
we must ask by what right can any man inherit the 
property of another when he never rendered a day of 
service that aided in its production? By no law of 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 193 

right can any man justly claim property that he had no 
part in bringing into existence. 

A "fixed inheritance law" would ignore all claims but 
the claims of direct heirs, and to these heirs it would 
give only an amount that would be fixed by law, and 
that amount would apply to every direct heir and to no 
others. 

The widow of a deceased person would be given an 
amount sufficient to keep her in comfort and luxury 
during her natural life, measured by our American 
standards of living, and to the children we would give 
an amount sufficient to give them a good start in life. 
This amount as well as the amount of a widow's inheri- 
tance would be fixed by law and the balance of every 
estate would be given to the government and placed in 
the general funds of the nation. 

Would any man complain of this disposition of his 
estate when the amount given to his widow would be 
sufficient to keep her in comfort and luxury the balance 
of her days, and would any red-blooded young Amer- 
ican complain when he must start the race of life with 
a fair competence, while thousands of his fellows must 
begin life without a penny ? The young man who would 
complain of such a disposition of his father's estate, or 
of the fact that he must begin life with only this ad- 
vantage over the thousands of our American youth, who 
must run the race of life in the same world with him, is 
not worthy the title "American." 

After you have asked the question, "Is it right?" 
then tell us, "What has the hope of an inheritance done 
for the human family?" I know your answer. You 
would say that the hope of an inheritance has stood in 
the way of the moral and intellectual progress of every 
generation, and inherited property has been the cause of 

14 



194 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

more legal contention, broken more ties of affection, and 
ruined more lives than any single thing in the world. 

It has furnished the Harry Thaws of every genera- 
tion. It has filled our courts with contentions and our 
penitentiaries with its misguided victims. 

If these answers are right, then your question, "Is it 
right?" is answered. 

And now you are asking, "What will such a law do 
for the world?" I will tell you. In one generation it 
will return to the treasury of the nation many times 
more money than would pay our national debt. It would 
legalize the status of every man, woman and child as a 
direct heir to all the accumulations of great wealth 
without bringing a single individual to want. It would 
pave the way to the ownership of a home for every one 
of the millions of laborers that under present laws can 
have no hope that they can ever own a home. It will 
christianize property. It will let our boys and girls of 
coming generations know that the promise of Life, Lib- 
erty and Happiness for which our forefathers fought 
was meant for them and for their children. 

Churches of America! This is Christianity at work. 
It is the only solution to the problem of over-riches, and 
it will stand the test of the closest scrutiny of the courts 
and that court of last resort, the people, as to its right- 
eousness. 

The day of accounting is here. That accounting must 
consider the welfare of the people. It must answer for 
the sins of the past. Eestitution has followed the judg- 
ments of the courts for centuries, and that principle of 
law is imbedded in the very first principles of the own- 
ership of property. 

Out in the great cattle countries of the west, if a man 
gets possession of a steer that carries another man's 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 195 

brand, when the proof is complete, the laws of that so- 
called lawless country render judgment of punishment 
and restitution of the steer. Your brand in that coun- 
try is prima facie evidence of ownership. Whose brand 
appears upon the wealth of the hoarded millions of 
America's today? Have they placed their brand upon 
the laboring man's steer? Was the wealth they claim 
not created by the labor of this nation ? If the brand of 
labor is on the steer that makes up the hoarded millions 
of the over-riches of this nation, a judgment of restitu- 
tion will be rendered by the highest court that ever sat 
in judgment upon the rights of a great people in any 
country on earth. 

Will anyone say that under righteous laws of owner- 
ship the people who today claim ownership of the vast 
fortunes would have a right to insist upon the claim? 
Will anyone deny that the labor of this nation produced 
them? Will anyone insist that the commonly accepted 
laws of inheritance apply in any moral sense to these 
aggregations of wealth or that they are a good thing 
for the people of a free country, or that it is safe or 
right to permit them to be handed down to future gen- 
erations to debauch them and oppress the people who 
earned them? 

If a man can disinherit his own son or daughter 
under our laws and leave his entire property to another, 
even though they may have helped to earn the property, 
why cannot this great christian nation disinherit the 
man who never earned a cent of the wealth he is about 
to hand down and distribute it among the people who 
did earn it? 

Under our Fixed Inheritance tax law the settlement 
of an estate would be entirely in the hands of the gov- 
ernment, and its probate courts, who would simply find 



196 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

the amount of the estate, and the legal heirs, and then, 
after giving to every legal heir his share as fixed by law, 
the balance would go into the national treasury to be 
used as the government provided. In other words, the 
partnership between the decedent and the government 
would be settled and the property divided as provided 
by law. 

Under this law the heirs would be protected. Dis- 
putes and contests would be a thing of the past. Minor 
children would no longer be at the mercy of unwise or 
dishonest guardians, but the government would stand 
sponsor not only for the safekeeping of the minor's 
share of the estate, but of its safe investment. 

A Fixed Inheritance law will cure the world of that 
canker of greed that today is eating out the very life 
of the people. It would turn the mind of men to con- 
structive righteousness, instead of the miserly hoarding 
of wealth. It would stop the future development of 
that sixth sense, that sense that has been in rapid de- 
velopment in the human family since the scramble for 
the almighty dollar has so enslaved the miserly mind of 
man that he will forget everything else and go on hoard- 
ing wealth until the tottering footsteps of old age fail 
him at the very edge of an open grave. It would insure 
a more brotherly relation between men, and give to the 
world a new vision of life. It would encourage thrift, 
because not a single young man would fold his hands 
and wonder when his good old father would die and 
the estate be divided. 

Such a law would not in the least interfere with the 
property of men of moderate means, but it would restore 
to the people of the next generation all that surplus of 
wealth that today represents the fortunes that are pay- 
ing a meager income tax such as we related in the be- 
ginning of this chapter. 



THE PROBLEM OF OVER-RICHES 191 

A Fixed Inheritance tax simply asks for the restitu- 
tion of the divine law of right, and that restitution is 
not asked during the life of the individual. 

We have been proud of the boast of our equality be- 
fore the law, but is there any equality in laws that per- 
mit such a handicap in the race of life as at this time 
allows one boy to start life with a fortune and compels 
a thousand boys just as good, just as industrious, just as 
intelligent, to start life without a penny? 

Men and women of America ! We repeat for emphasis 
that the questions you are to settle in this contention 
are the questions between restitution and ruin. Restitu- 
tion means nothing less than industrial freedom, and 
future generations will point to it as the emancipation 
proclamation that shall establish the freedom of labor 
from the industrial slavery that today holds it in bond- 
age. 

Will you help us write this verdict into the great 
court judgments of this nation and permit the execution 
of that judgment to return to the people the teeming 
millions of wealth that today disgrace our christian 
civilization ? 

Fellow Americans ! You have many questions to set- 
tle before you can realize the Liberty and Freedom and 
Happiness which was the hope of our forefathers and 
the world. Too long you have sought that promised 
happiness in commercial exploitation. Liberty and 
Freedom can never be realized under the awful handi- 
cap of wealth that today holds this nation in its grip. 
The yoke of slavery was never more galling to the 
negroes of the Southland than this yoke of industrial 
slavery is to American freemen. 

Help us to remove this handicap of poverty, and let 
our boys and girls of coming generations know that the 



198 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

promise of Life, Liberty and Happiness for which our 
forefathers fought was meant for them and for their 
children. 

If you will help us write this new doctrine of a 
Christian Democracy into law, and to so christianize the 
wealth of this nation as to bring a new era of righteous- 
ness into the world, you and your children will be the 
beneficiaries of that benediction that is sure to be shed 
upon the world. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF ABIE RICA 199 



Chapter XII 

TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 

America has more than a hundred million of the most 
progressive, energetic and enlightened people under the 
sun. The world's population multiplies this several 
times. Of this vast army more than fifty millions are 
communicants in the christian churches of the land. 
The vision of these churches for the uplift of the world 
has been so broad that it has reached into every country, 
and it is at this time committed to the christianizing of 
more than a hundred million human souls. 

Through nearly two hundred christian denominations 
it has tried to impress its messages upon the human 
understanding of men. 

Humanity has ever been the primary interest of re- 
ligion and to the church, as it represents the Christ in 
the world, belongs the work of speaking for humanity. 
Is the church ready to assume the great responsibilit}^ 
that such an undertaking brings? It ought to be ready 
for this great task, but it must understand and take ac- 
count that we are living in an age of a new social con- 
sciousness. The literature of every country throbs with 
it. It is reflected in the press, and it has found its way 
into the colleges and the universities. Political parties 
are taking notice, and legislators are grappling with it. 

For centuries the churches have been talking and 
preaching about a personal religion, and even at this 
time there are those who will insist that the church 
must stand aloof from all questions but the "fruits of 
the spirit," which they say is the only concern of the 
church. 



200 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

But there is a social revolution on, and it cannot be 
stopped. That social revolution has a vision for the 
future, not of the churches alone, but of the world. It 
is building up a new hope. It is seeking new definitions 
that apply to religion as well as to business, and the 
christian churches must give it support and assist in its 
guidance. 

The problems that are being discussed are not the 
problems of a personal religion, and while they are not 
antagonistic to a personal religion, they are insisting 
that the church must concern itself with the great un- 
solved problems of the world as they relate to the lives 
of the people who make up the great masses of the 
human family. These are not the problems of the poor 
alone. They are not the problems of the rich, but they 
are the problems that must be settled before a real 
Christianity can hope to gain a foothold even in this 
home of religious liberty. 

The world must learn that man is more than prop- 
erty. When Abraham Lincoln wrote the emancipation 
proclamation he wrote into the institutions of this coun- 
try that man is no longer property, but from the day 
the armistice was signed at Appomattox, property and 
money, and the power they brought to those in posses- 
sion of them, got a strangle-hold upon the people of 
this nation and the purpose of that strangle-hold was to 
fasten upon labor industrial slavery instead of chattel 
slavery. 

Since the civil war the people of this christian nation, 
tired of war, have given themselves to the development 
of our great undeveloped resources and to the acquisi- 
tion of wealth. The prizes of this undeveloped country 
in a time of the greatest inventive skill in the manufac- 
ture of improved labor-saving machinery, invited the 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 201 

brightest minds of the age to the industrial conquest of 
the country. Literature, art, oratory, law, medicine, all 
these offered less alluring opportunities than business 
in the conquest for the wealth that was hidden in the 
mountains and in the richest valleys and prairies in the 
world. 

Will anyone wonder that the allurements of such oc- 
cupations, under such passions as gripped the industrial 
world, should make men forget God? Need we be sur- 
prised that men who had forgotten God would set up 
and worship a god of gold? 

They were spanning a continent with steel. They were 
making homes out on the great western plains. They 
were filling our treasury with gold and other precious 
metals of our mountains. Ail these activities forced 
into their lives the problems of industrial expansion. 
Industrial expansion suggested special privileges. Wild 
with the fervor of industrial expansion, they forgot 
God, and they forgot that their rights and their liber- 
ties were being parceled out, and that some day they 
would awaken and remember those prophetic words of 
our lamented Lincoln when he said to the people, "Be- 
ware of that power that is today threatening to place 
money above labor in the structure of the government," 
and then he said that the time would come when "All 
of libert}^ would be lost.-' 

It is true that the "March of Empire" toward the 
great western plains laid the foundation of a great com- 
monwealth, but it is also true that the grants of our 
government of the lands of the people to promote the 
building of railroads, despoiled them of their lands, 
built the roads, put the rolling stock on them and left 
the promoters the entire property that should have been, 
and was by right, the property of the people. 



202 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Not satisfied with the millions thus acquired without 
effort, they exploited the pioneers out on the bleak 
prairies of the west for all the traffic would bear, and 
perpetuated their special privileges by corrupting legis- 
latures. These promoters were nothing less than mil- 
lionaire monopolies by the gift of the government. 
Commercialized greed in the saddle. Money their god. 
Industrial power their ideal. Can any man wonder 
that, after fifty years, the people are facing an indus- 
trial revolution, and that they are asking some stubborn 
questions about business and about religion? 

The free homes of fifty years ago are the mortgaged 
and the tenant homes of today. Those homes were built 
out of the greatest sacrifices that were ever made by the 
pioneers of any land. The history of those sacrifices 
will never be written. Every landscape is bedecked with 
the evidences of blighted hopes and aspirations. This 
was a conquest for homes. It was the building of a 
great empire. It went ahead of the churches and the 
schools. It left the comforts of an older civilization be- 
hind, and it never realized the blessings of the new. 

The churches followed. They were filled with the 
spirit of the builders of the great west. Each denomina- 
tion vied with every other denomination in the conquest 
of the spiritual world, and that conquest has been going 
on in the entire country for more than a hundred years. 
This was a peaceful conquest, but it served the purpose 
of engendering strife and bitter contentions. The his- 
tories of the olden times tell us that the wars of those 
times were religious wars, and that among the mon- 
archies of the old world every hillside was bedecked 
with the graves of religious martyrs. 

Must the world be christianized by conquest? Must 
the people be awakened through a baptism of blood? 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 208 

Does sorrow and suffering bring us closer to the Master? 
Is it true that the road to the cross must lead us through 
a vale of tears? Does fear lead a man closer to God 
than love? Listen! When religion typified the Christ 
life, when it stood for the invisible God, it might have 
had a vision for those who understood its meaning, but 
in the great struggle of the world today, the word, and 
the two hundred creeds of the two hundred denomina- 
tions that represent those creeds, must stand aside while 
we learn anew the doctrines of the Model Man of Gal- 
lilee. His life and His teachings are the last arguments 
in the religious ethics of the world, and instead of "re- 
ligious emotions" we must bow at the feet of the Master 
and accept His simple teachings as the rule of life. 

What matters it to the world if, while they are shout- 
ing their hallelujahs of an emotional religion, their 
homes are being taken from them by an organized 
scheme of exploitation that renders the burdens of life 
intolerable, and at the same time renders impossible the 
raising and education of a family? 

Christ gave to the people a real program of social and 
community service. He was concerned about their bodies 
and their minds and their social conditions. He fed the 
hungry, He clothed the naked, He ministered to the sick. 
He taught the people in His parable of the last judg- 
ment that what is done for man is done as a service to 
God. 

John Ruskin, almost forgotten, said, "There is a true 
church wherever one man meets another helpfully. That 
is the only holy mother church which ever was or ever 
will be." This is the doctrine of human need satisfied 
in human service. 

Social service is as old as society. It began when man 
needed the help of his neighbors. It draws men to- 



204 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

gether. Christian life is christian service, not service 
for self, but service to others. 

It won't do to talk in these times about "religious 
emotions." The world has been fed on religious emo- 
tions for a thousand years. We have too long over- 
looked the fact that religion is primarily a life, and 
that instead of trying to save our own souls out of the 
wreck of a lost world, we should devote ourselves to 
saving the world. We have failed to make men under- 
stand that if they are fit to live, they will be ready to 
die. 

These are burning words. They are not intended to 
lightly speak of the emotional side of the religious life, 
but to impress the church of today that in this awful 
industrial crisis we must give our strength and our 
abilities first to the industrial reconstruction of the 
world. For more than fifty years we have been build- 
ing up a commercial despotism such as no country ever 
saw. Has the church not been swallowed up in the 
great whirlpool of this commercial despotism and lost 
its vision of a redeemed world? And has it not lost 
sight of the blight that special privilege and commercial 
exploitation bring? 

The greatest revolution that has ever engrossed the 
minds of men is in progress at this very moment, and 
the church must know that industrial, economic and 
social reconstruction must go hand in hand in this great 
revolution. The rights of men must be weighed in the 
balance with the rights of property and money, and 
these things must be taught in the schools. These rights 
must be proclaimed from the pulpit, and the church 
must quit "labeling men and women for transportation 
to a realm unknown," and enlist the great army of God's 
noblemen in this conflict for industrial and social recon- 
struction. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 205 

Have the churches not yet come to understand that 
the economic and industrial conditions under which we 
live renders it impossible for a man to live a Christian 
life, and raise and educate his family, and succeed in 
business? This statement falls short of the truth. A 
young man who marries today cannot in a whole life- 
time earn a living for even a small family, and lay by 
enough money ever to own a home of his own. 

I well know there are exceptions to this statement, but 
the exceptions are very rare, for the industrial struggle 
has already closed the doors of opportunity for those 
who would enter, and that industrial struggle is an 
overpowering impediment to the christianizing of the 
world. 

What must be done to remove these impediments? 
The church must be aroused. It must take a mighty 
interest in this greatest crisis that has ever come to the 
world. It must help to breathe into the hearts and 
minds of the people a real spirit of fundamental truth. 
The laymen and the laywomen must be enlisted in the 
work. They must know that their homes are in jeop- 
ardy, if they have any, and if they have not, then it is 
the possibility ever to own a home that is about to be 
lost. These laymen and laywomen may lack something 
in rhetoric, but they will make up in their sympathies 
and experience what they may lack in eloquence. 

Have we not come to know that the world is charged 
and surcharged with good will? Do the people not be- 
lieve in a square deal? Can we not organize and capi- 
talize that good will? And then, can we not apply the 
teachings of the Master to the solution of the complex 
social and economic problems of the life of today? If 
we fail to do this, or if we close our eyes and refuse to 
do it, it means that the churches have no message for 



206 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

the age. We must proclaim these new doctrines of 
"rights" and "duties" until the golden rule of life shall 
be applied by employer and employee, to landlord, to 
tenant, to seller, to buyer, to mistress, to servant, to pro- 
moter, to investor, to rich, to poor, and under all we 
must remove the laws that make the conditions under 
which we live possible. 

In this struggle we will need great teachers. We will 
need men and women to make sacrifices. We will need 
men and women to do heroic acts. We will need red- 
blooded, liberty-loving and God-fearing men and women 
who are willing to give their very lives to the great 
cause for which we stand. Will we find these men and 
women? We shall see. 

The world war crystallized a new vision into a work- 
ing force in the organization of the interchurch world 
movement. This organization has brought to the churches 
and the world a new vision of the problems of mankind. 
It has sensed the spirit and the power of organization, 
and through that organization it is putting into effect 
the greatest campaign of investigation that was ever 
undertaken. It has come to recognize the fundamental 
fact that the first need of the world is a thorough diag- 
nosis of the diseases of the world before attempting to 
apply remedies. With this great army of righteous men 
and women, the diagnosis of the problems of the world 
will be disclosed and then a real reconstruction can be 
effected. 

Since writing this chapter the temporary collapse of the 
Inter-Church-world movement has been announced. Every chris- 
tian in America will deplore the inconvenience it has suffered. 
The whole christian world rejoiced in the vision and the chris- 
tian spirit that prompted and set in motion that organization. It 
looked backward with sorrow to the wasted energies of disorgani- 
zation, and forward to the unification of the churches of the 
nation in the great work of christianizing of the world. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 201 

The organization of the christian forces of America has not 
failed. It is only waiting for new recruits, and for new align- 
ments. In its first drive for a diagnosis of the conditions of 
labor, it was confronted by the greatest power in America today, 
saying: "Thus far and no farther". It will not appeal for new 
recruits in vain. God will never permit a movement conceived 
in such a spirit of uplift for humanity to fail. — The Author. 

Immediately these investigations and the remedies 
must be directed to the solution of the problems of our 
own county, for world reconstruction and regeneration 
must begin in America. We must set our own house in 
order, and then we can look across the waters into other 
lands. 

For centuries the missionaries of every denomination 
have carried their message of the Christ into unfriendly 
countries, and the difficulties that have retarded the 
progress of these missionaries, and the sacrifices they 
have made, have never been brought to the American 
mind in their full meaning. Christian people every- 
where believed that the world war had opened up the 
unfriendly countries, wiped out the prejudices of the 
past and paved the way for the spread of the gospel 
without the hindrances that have so long retarded Chris- 
tian efforts in the past. The challenge of the dark 
places of the old world was the greatest challenge that 
has ever come to the churches of the world, but the 
churches well knew that such a work was possible only 
through Christian co-operation. That challenge and the 
vision of the churches was the interpretation of the gos- 
pel into every language and the carrying of that gospel 
into every country. 

What a vision ! But do the churches not know that 
christianizing an unfriendly country without first culti- 
vating friendly political relations is worse than futile? 
The ground must be prepared. The seed must be planted. 
Then, with the labor of the husbandman, and the sun- 



208 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

shine and the shower, the harvest of the autumn will be 
assured. 

If this doctrine is good as it applies to christianizing 
the world, it is good as it applies to christianizing 
America. The christianizing of America is the chal- 
lenge of the church at this time, and the great call to 
the churches of this nation is a thorough diagnosis of 
the underlying causes of the discontent and unrest that 
is at this time retarding the progress of christian efforts. 

The very fact of the organization of the interchurch 
world movement recognizes the wastes of disunion. In 
the past the energies of the churches have been frittered 
away by competition, jealousies, controversies and fric- 
tion caused by disunion. The worst enemies of the 
churches in the past have been within their own house- 
holds. The early fathers of the church may have made 
mistakes, but twentieth century Christianity must have a 
broader vision. They recognize that there was never a 
church without its alloy. Where one is strong, another 
is weak. Because churchmen have been over-tenacious 
of creed, and full of contempt for those who differed 
from them, and because of their many varieties of re- 
ligion, and theories, and phases of thought, creeds, lib- 
erty of worship, all these have contributed to whatever 
failure may be truthfully ascribed to the church as it 
has lost its leadership in the progressive ideals of life. 
It has been well said that a divided Christianity must 
mean in its last analysis an unbelieving world, for the 
forces of evil are ever consolidated in an unholy alliance 
against everything that is good in the world. 

A thousand voices from within and without are call- 
ing upon the christian churches to unite, and the re- 
sponse they shall make to this call will be the supreme 
test of Christianity. 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 209 

Religion is not a profession. It is not a theory. It is 
not an experience. It is a life, and a social comradeship. 

If this is true, and we believe progressive christian 
thinkers everywhere will give their hearty approval of 
it, then the building of a christian democracy in this 
country to take the place of the unchristian government 
that is represented by our "government by party and 
the spoils system," under which we have so long been 
misgoverned and misruled, must be the first work of the 
christian churches. 

A Christian Democracy ! The prophecy that "a nation 
shall be born in a day" fulfilled. Whether such a de- 
mocracy shall be born in a day, or whether it shall con- 
sume a decade, little concerns the liberty-loving christian 
people of this republic, but the fact that the christian 
churches of this nation have, as one man, gotten a vision 
of that idealism which alone can redeem this nation 
from sordid greed, and furnish the world with a new 
altruistic impulse, this makes all the difference in the 
world. Cannot the world look to the churches to aid 
in a reformation that is so momentous, and that prom- 
ises so much for human uplift, a reformation that with 
one fell stroke will plant righteousness where unright- 
eousness thrived; that will destroy political graft, and 
restore this great government to the people; that will 
assure a happy home for every industrious laborer within 
our country; that will within one generation restore to 
the people the ill-gotten gains of half a century and 
bring happiness where today there is nothing but dis- 
content and bitter industrial slavery; that will forever 
destroy the spirit of strife that has kept the country in 
a war of strikes and lockouts, cannot the world look to 
the churches to aid in such a momentous enterprise as 
this? 

15 



210 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Someone is asking how this can be done? The readi- 
ness to do it is the best answer to this question. 

The christian churches of America have a membership 
of forty-three million souls. They have two hundred 
three thousand four hundred and thirty-eight church 
edifices where every Sabbath these communicants con- 
gregate for worship. If the church people shall under- 
take the task of spiritualizing the ideals of a christian 
democracy, and setting the house of this nation in order, 
they would have an army of forty-three million of the 
brightest and the best of the manhood and womanhood 
of America already enlisted in the great cause for which 
we plead. Every church would open its doors for com- 
munity meetings, and those community meetings would 
have for their immediate purpose the building of a real 
christian democracy. Such a democracy would be built 
upon the eternal foundations of truth, against which 
the wastes of time could not prevail. Such an organiza- 
tion and such a purpose would put new blood into the 
official life of this nation, and it would organize and set 
in motion the greatest problem solving campaign that 
was ever organized on earth. It would displace mis- 
representation by planting eternal truth. It would de- 
stroy the pie-counter in the political life of this nation, 
and in its stead it would build among the people a spirit 
of trust that would not be subject to the uncertainty of 
political graft and to the cries of "special privilege" 
seekers. 

Churches of America! This is the greatest challenge 
to your spirit of Christianity that has been made since 
the civil war. It has a vision for every citizen under 
the jurisdiction of this government. It is the beginning 
of a program that must never be abandoned until this 
government is made a christian government in fact as 



TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF AMERICA 211 

well as in name, and when that purpose is accomplished 
the world will be able to see how easy it is to apply the 
doctrines of the Christ to the laws that make for the 
very life of the nation. 

A Christian Democracy! The doctrines of every 
church denomination in the land applied to the single 
purpose of realizing and spiritualizing the doctrines of 
the Savior of men, in law. 



212 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 



Chapter XIII 

TO THE NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF 
AMERICA 

For a hundred years you have pleaded the cause of 
enfranchisement of the women of America in the great- 
est court of public thought and public opinion on earth. 

Many noble women have devoted their very lives that 
this christian nation might be made to realize that the 
right of full partnership between man and woman in 
the affairs of the nation is fundamental. 

You have pleaded for this partnership because it em- 
bodied one of the fundamental principles for which our 
forefathers fought in the revolutionary struggle. 

You have told the people from every forum in Amer- 
ica that if "taxation without representation was tyranny 
in 1776, it has been tyranny ever since against the women 
of America." 

You have urged your cause because you knew that in 
the settlement of the great moral and political questions 
so urgently demanding solution in the nation the coun- 
cils of the mothers of America were needed. 

You have blushed when you have been obliged to ad- 
mit that the politicians of both dominant political par- 
ties every four years turned a deaf ear to your pleas, 
and you well know that the refusal to grant suffrage to 
the women of the nation was a tacit admission that they 
feared the influence of the women at the ballot box. 

Nobody knows better than the mothers of America 
that it took a great war, with its arguments of waste, to 
submit the question of constitutional prohibition to the 
people, and it took the supreme need of the women to go 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 213 

to the front and bind up the wounds of our boys in the 
great war to soften their hearts to the submission of the 
amendment providing for suffrage. The achievement of 
these great victories was the greatest achievement for 
moral and civic righteousness that has come to this na- 
tion since the birth of the republic. These amendments 
to our constitution are already indelibly written into the 
hearts of the people, and the day of their complete rati- 
fication by the states will be celebrated by future gen- 
erations as the beginning of a new era of righteousness 
in our country. 

The legalized saloon debauched the moral and polit- 
ical life of this nation for more than a century, and the 
refusal of the political parties to place in the hands of 
the women of this nation that greatest of all weapons, 
the ballot, with which they might crush that monster of 
wrong was a cowardly political crime that must be 
charged to both political parties alike. 

If any class of the citizens of America has had oppor- 
tunity to understand the weakness of our system of law 
making through political parties, or government by 
party, the women of America, constituting at this time 
more than half of the voting strength of the entire na- 
tion, have certainly had the fullest opportunity, as they 
have seen the cowardly attitude they have shown toward 
these two great reforms. There was never a time during 
the agitation of these great reforms when, if the ques- 
tion could have been considered by the people without 
the prejudices and misrepresentation that go with every 
question that must seek adjustment through political 
action, it would not have been settled by the wisdom of 
the people in one campaign. Had either question been 
presented directly to the people through such a referen- 
dum as we propose, prohibition and suffrage would both 
have been realized fifty years ago. 



214 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

But no good can come at this time by repining over 
the wrongs of the past. The women are already clothed 
with full citizenship, and the people are waiting anx- 
iously to know just what influence their enfranchisement 
will have on the affairs of the nation. 

Nobody knows better than the mothers of this land 
that public opinion must precede legislation, and nobody 
knows better than they that the road to a healthy public 
sentiment is through the homes and the schools and the 
churches. The planting of the seeds of truth is the 
fundamental need of this republic at this time, and the 
destruction of the power of political misrepresentation 
that has so long stood in the way of reform is the burn- 
ing problem of the age. 

It is futile to cry out against false education, and cor- 
rupt conditions, and unjust laws, and inertia among the 
people, unless we can remove the machinery that allows 
these things to exist and plant something in its stead 
that will correct the evil. This is to be one of the first 
duties of the newly enfranchised women of America. 

Enfranchisement has changed woman's outlook upon 
life. It has changed her property status. It has 
changed her domestic relations and her social conditions 
and these changes must make for the integrity of the 
home, as well as for the stability of the nation. Suffrage 
has harnessed the man and wife side by side, instead of 
working them tandem, with the husband as the leader 
and the wife as the wheeler in the team. 

But the burning question of today is, "What will the 
women do with their newly achieved responsibilities as 
citizens?" Will they begin the organization of repub- 
lican and democratic clubs and enter the many fields of 
political muck-raking campaigns for offices? If they 
shall permit themselves to be drawn into this caldron of 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 215 

political corruption, the nation will go down as Kome 
did in the early histor}^ of the world. 

Lest someone should take too much to heart the ques- 
tions I propounded, I hasten to say that the question 
would never give concern to one who has ever under- 
stood the mother heart of American women. A repre- 
sentative mother of the nation only a short time ago 
said : "God's laws, in their very nature, will always lead 
a great majority of the women directly to the home, to 
the intimacy and love of family life, to motherhood, and 
its duties in the raising of children, and enfranchise- 
ment will implant in them a higher consciousness of 
their duties and their obligations than they have ever 
known before." 

Who knows better than the American women that the 
foundation of this republic is the American home? 
Have they not been fighting for the destruction of the 
saloons for more than a hundred years, because they 
knew that the business of the saloon was the destruction 
of the homes? 

The American Home 

If the American home is to be the foundation of this 
republic, then we must look well to the foundation of 
the American homes. 

The beginning of the home is the marriage relation. 
Before the marriage relation is the period of mating, 
and the period of mating is the real beginning of the 
home. 

In the ceremonies of many of the churches solemniz- 
ing the marriage relation, they conclude with the words. 
"What God has joined together, let no man put asllnder. ,, 

There are those today who tell us that marriage is a 
civil contract and nothing more. It is true that the law 
makes marriage a civil contract, but does this mean that 



216 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

it is nothing more than a civil contract? Is it not a 
fact that the law simply holds the marriage relation to 
be a civil contract for the protection of society from 
those who would impose upon it by making marriage a 
mockery ? 

The doctrines of "Free Love'' and the theories of 
"Affinity" have threatened and destroyed many homes. 
They are the doctrines of the "Evil One" and they plant 
nothing but ruin in the homes of the innocent for selfish 
purposes. 

Whether we believe that marriage is a civil contract 
and nothing more, or that the love of a man and woman 
that culminates in the marriage relation is more than a 
civil contract and that it is recorded in High Heaven, 
we must recognize that any disturbance of that relation 
at any stage of the married life is a direct menace to the 
sanctity and security of the American home. 

It is not our purpose in this to discuss the question of 
who should marry, but we cannot refrain from making 
the statement that the mating time among our young 
people has too often been attended with little considera- 
tion for the problems of the future. 

The marriage vows are not simply for the passing 
day; they are for life. Marriage is not simply a con- 
tract in law, but its sacred authority began in the Gar- 
den of Eden, and he who lightly trifles with the sacred 
rights of a man and his lawfully wedded wife is strik- 
ing a deadly blow at the very foundations of the re- 
public. 

We are considering one of the greatest problems of 
the age. Its seriousness concerns every parent as well 
as every citizen. We are teaching our boys and girls 
the importance of improving the breeds of the horses 
and cattle and hogs on the farms, but we are failing to 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 217 

apply the same common sense in the solution of the 
problems of match-making among our children. If the 
boys and girls of this generation have any right to com- 
plain against their parents for neglect to impress those 
fundamental truths that so vitally relate to the future 
happiness of the fathers and mothers of the next gen- 
eration, that right of complaint will relate first of all to 
their failure to give them a thorough knowledge of the 
entire philosophy of sex as it relates to marriage, and 
of marriage as it relates to the making of a home, and 
that knowledge should come to the child before it is too 
late. 

The world is full of mistakes in marriage that should 
have been avoided. Control is not possible, but there 
are some mistakes that must be avoided if the safety of 
the American home is to be kept pure and sacred. 

The words I am now about to speak are spoken for 
the mothers and fathers who have boys and girls that 
some time in the future are to become prospective brides 
and bridegrooms. An American home cannot stand the 
severe tests of the future for peace and security unless 
it is founded upon, and has its beginnings in, a single 
standard of moral purity. Fathers and mothers, if you 
permit your pure girl to stand at the marriage altar 
with a man who cannot qualify for the same purity as 
the girl he is to marry, you are doing that daughter a 
wrong that you can never make right, and you are per- 
mitting a home to be started under a handicap that is 
almost certain to bring disaster at some time during the 
life of the new home builders. 

There has been much talk about eugenic laws for the 
protection of society as it relates to marriage, but while 
such laws are necessary in this evil-minded generation, 
in the beginnings of a home in which the single stand- 



$18 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

ard of purity is assured as I have suggested, with a man 
fit to be the king and a woman fit to be the queen of 
that beautiful home life, renders that home in reality an 
enduring foundation of our American life. 

Such a home invites equality, acquiescence, sacrifice, 
indulgence and wise-thoughtecl, deep-hearted co-opera- 
tion with a steadfast purpose of doing duty at whatever 
cost. 

The making of such a home as this, is to be a capital- 
ist, as well as an altruist. Back of such a home as this 
is the guaranty of the government. At such a fireside 
is sure to sit the motherhood of the nation, and those 
who might lay foul hands upon that home will now have 
to reckon with the mothers of this land. 

Were I to emphasize the first great problem that con- 
fronts the newly enfranchised women of America, I 
would say with a double emphasis that the very first 
duty of the women of America is to look well to the 
laying in enduring truth of the foundations of American 
life by laying well the foundations of purity in the 
American home. 

The beginning of a real christian American home 
must first of all contemplate a right vision of what a 
home shall mean to the home-builders and to the com- 
munity and the state and the nation. 

What was God's plan of life? What was His pur- 
pose of the sex relation? He said, "It is not good for 
man to live alone. I will make him an help-meet for 
him." When Eve had been created, God blessed them 
and said, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the 
earth and subdue it." 

As I look around me and see the discontent in the 
world, as I read the stories of broken marital vows, and 
the inconstancy of one or the other in the sacred rela- 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 219 

tion of husband and wife, I can only wonder where lies 
the fault. I have always thought that if a man had 
needed more than one woman, God would have provided 
him with another, or as many as he needed, and if this 
is true there can be no natural cause or excuse for in- 
constancy. 

The court records of this nation disclose an appalling 
condition when we read the petitions setting up the 
items that form the basis of a petition for divorce. In- 
constancy, infidelity, lost affection, lack of affinity, 
failure of support, and many others too frivolous for 
consideration. 

Let no man or woman consider the question of divorce 
in a spirit of levity. Every cause that may be recited as 
a cause of legal separation is simply another demand for 
self-examination of our solution of the problems relat- 
ing to the making and the protection of the homes of 
this nation. Many of the homes that end in divorce 
should never have been contemplated in the beginning. 
An intelligent word of wisdom might have avoided a 
mistake. Too little attention has been paid to the mis- 
guided judgment of innocent children. Too many times 
there is no vision, and no understanding of the sacred 
obligations of the relation of husband and wife, and too 
many times other causes contribute to the breaking up 
of otherwise happy homes. 

Must I say that one of the first causes of the begin- 
nings of discontent and final divorce lies in the fact that 
maternity is not respected in the raising of a family. 
Did God mistake His injunction to our first parents 
when He said, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 
the earth and subdue it?" Look around you and an- 
swer me. Is God's injunction to our first parents being 
obeyed? Is the world being peopled by multiplication 



220 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

or by addition? Is the family of this generation what 
God intended it should be? Does the marriage relation 
bring a vision of such a home as we must have to be the 
bulwark of American life? Let me assert that if the 
young men and women who are being united today in 
the holy bonds of matrimony would avoid the sorrow 
and the disgrace of a lost affection and of inconstancy 
in the chosen partner in that sacred obligation of the 
marital relation they will find one of the remedies in 
"the baby in the home." 

If I were painting a picture of the beginning of an 
ideal home that is to be the bulwark of American life, 
I would paint that home to show a pure minded man to 
be the king and a spotless woman to be the queen of 
that home, and then I would paint that loving father 
and mother looking down into the cradle where their 
first-born was cooing its happy approval of the love that 
shone from the eyes of those parents as they beheld in a 
vision of the future the developed son or daughter just 
ready to start out to do battle in this unfriendly world. 

Happy is the child who is born into a home where 
such a welcome awaits it as this, and happy are the 
parents who can watch the physical growth and the 
mental development of a child of their own flesh and 
blood that is born in the environments of a pure, well- 
considered love. 

Do I need to say that no man is a real man after 
God's own plan of life who has not heard the infant 
cry of distress, and felt the soft hands of his own child, 
and no woman is a real woman until her mother heart 
has known the love of a tender offspring? God's law of 
life has provided the means and the limitations of the 
marital relation, and the broken law of those "means 
and limitations" is certain to bring to whoever breaks 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 221 

that law the punishment that is as certain as any law of 
cause and effect in the world. 

If the marriage vow shall bring no promise of the ful- 
fillment of that command with which God blessed the 
marriage relation when he created Mother Eve to be a 
helpmeet to Father Adam, barring natural impediments, 
then the marriage relation is nothing less than legalized 
prostitution, and the home that was the promise of that 
sacred union is made a harem instead of a home. 

This is plain speaking, but the time has come for 
plain speaking. Homes that fail to measure up to the 
standard we have set are not homes, but breeding places 
for divorce. 

Is there anything in all the world more beautiful than 
an ideal home? Is there a nobler purpose in life than 
the rearing of a happy family? 

Such a home is a beautiful world in which to live. 
To be at the head of such a home is a higher mission 
than the call to fill the greatest pulpit in America or the 
place of a star actress upon the stage. 

Such homes as this beginning is sure to make are the 
kind of homes that are to be the enduring foundation of 
this republic, and the first work of the women of Amer- 
ica is to bring such conditions in economics, in educa- 
tion, and in environment as to make such homes not 
only possible, but common in this country. 

But the women of America must take America as it 
is. We have made mistakes. We are drifting away 
from the ideals of the fathers, but whatever mistakes 
we have made in the past, they cannot be justly charged 
to the women. 

It has been said that enfranchisement would place a 
special emphasis upon the moral and social sides of legal 
enactments. This may be true, but I want to insist that 



222 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

even the moral and social questions that must be solved 
in this country are questions that do not peculiarly be- 
long to the women. There is no question that does not 
place the same obligation upon the man as upon the 
woman, and if either shifts the burden and the responsi- 
bility to the shoulders of the other, such a shifting of 
burdens is culpable. 

Divorce 

Just at this time this nation is facing, and must give 
serious consideration to, a problem that has become a 
national problem in its scope, as well as in its menace 
to the very life of the republic. It is the problem of 
marriage and divorce. 

Fifty years ago divorce was practically unknown. 
Today it is one of the perplexing questions of our social 
and political life. It is shaking the very foundations of 
the homes of the nation. It has even come into the na- 
tion as an argument for new thoughts and new theories 
that menace the very foundation of our society. 

Separate marriage laws in each of the states in the 
Union permitting, as they do, a separation by divorce in 
one state and then a speedy marriage in another, has 
become such an alarming menace to the security of the 
family life that the people are aroused for the safety of 
the future. The theory that marriage is nothing more 
than a civil contract, and the fact that marriage laws in 
the several states have reflected that theory through the 
laxity of their provisions, has so aroused the country as 
to force the legislature of every state into the passage of 
laws requiring a recorded marriage license, and in fifteen 
states they have passed eugenic laws. 

In South Carolina divorces are still unknown. In 
New York a divorce may be granted only on proof of 
infidelity, while in the middle states a divorce may be 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 223 

granted on any one of ten grounds, among which are 
excuses that are most flimsy, and divorce has become in 
these states so common as to create little more than a 
passing comment. 

Every year from 70,000 to 80,000 children are robbed 
of one or both parents by divorce, and at the same time 
they are robbed of property that otherwise might have 
made a foundation for their care and education. 

What a condition this reveals. Will anyone wonder 
that Gladstone said only a short time before he passed 
away, "Divorce constitutes the greatest menace to Amer- 
ican institutions." 

Time will not permit an exhaustive discussion of the 
entire problem of marriage and divorce, but with the 
ballot in the hands of the women of this country they 
will take some short-cuts to the solution of the problem 
of this national disgrace, and the first chapter in that 
short-cut will be the adoption of a "Twentieth Amend- 
ment" to the Federal Constitution permitting the enact- 
ment of a Federal law of marriage and divorce. We 
must deal with this question through Federal legislation, 
because if every state in the Union but one were to pass 
uniform marriage and divorce laws, the remaining state 
would still furnish the nation with a divorce mecca. 

Honorable marriage between the fit should be encour- 
aged, and if divorce must be granted, as we think it 
sometimes must, that divorce should be valid in all the 
states of the Union, and children who are legitimate in 
one state should be legitimate in every other state. 

But I cannot discuss every separate phase of the en- 
franchisement of the women of America. I confess to a 
spirit of pessimism when I study the machinery of the 
government for correcting the evils that in these days 
of speedy evolution in industrial affairs necessitate laws 
for the protection of the people from extortion. 



224 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

I have spoken of some of the very fundamental causes 
of divorce, but I have not spoken of the one greatest 
underlying cause of the domestic troubles that are today 
bringing sorrow into the land. 

When I see every day the young wives of our cities 
standing behind the counters in the marts of trade, or 
filling places as stenographers in some man's office, in- 
stead of doing the daily duties of a loving wife and 
mother in a real American home, I am alarmed for the 
safety of the nation and the sanctity and peace of the 
American home. I am not passing a rash or harsh 
judgment upon the woman whose married life has 
brought to her the apparent necessity of taking her 
place in such an environment as one of the breadwinners, 
but I know the dangers that lurk around such an en- 
vironment, and I think I know that this is not God's 
way of life and this is enough. 

An economic condition that offers an argument for 
such an employment for young wives is vicious, and this 
nation will not see the per cent of divorces lowered un- 
til the argument of human need has been answered by 
righteous laws that will make it possible for every young 
wife to take her place in the world where God intended 
she should labor as the queen of a happy home, where 
her mother heart might satisfy its longings in the love 
and care of a family of her own blood. 

Women of America ! We need your influence in the 
making of laws that relate to the home and the home 
life of our country. 

We need your councils in the larger problems of the 
world. You can render the nation no service by joining 
hands with political parties. This course would simply 
add to the already unwieldy mass of political unrest 
that keeps the nation divided upon the vital questions 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 225 

that so much need the wise judgment of students instead 
of prejudiced politicians. Outside of political parties 
the women of the nation will be a mobile mass, poised 
to crush the enemies of the world as they show their 
heads in election contests and at the polls. 

But we must not proscribe the limits of women's work 
as citizens by limiting her sphere of public action to the 
questions that relate alone to the moral and social con- 
ditions of society? To do this would not only insult 
the splendid spirit of the women of this generation in 
their work for the public good, but it would render an 
untrue verdict of the public opinion as to woman's place 
as man's equal in every test of masterly achievement. 
Women have taken an honorable place in art, we have 
felt their magic power in literature, their place in 
science and in business has been assured, and they have 
more than stood the test as they have stood by us in the 
field of education. In every field of human endeavor 
they have stood the supreme test of equality, except in 
the physical conquests of war, and here their power at 
the ballot box will wield an influence that will surely 
destroy the possibility that the world will ever again be 
disgraced by war. 

Under the christian democracy we propose, the women 
of this nation will immediately become active members 
of the greatest school of problem solving that has ever 
been made possible in any land or in any generation. 
They will take their place as teachers. They will force 
upon the student life of America, a stud}^ of the funda- 
mental problems of government, instead of being forced, 
as they are today by political prejudice, to stand aloof 
even from a mention of anything that might seem polit- 
ical. In their homes they will study the great problems 
of government, and in the community meetings they will 



226 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

exchange their conclusions with their neighbors, and out 
of the multitude of their councils their verdict will sel- 
dom fall short of justice. 

What is the possibility of such a force as this in the 
world? More than fifty per cent of the voting strength 
of the nation is in the hands of the women. They have 
been freer than the men from the environments of polit- 
ical prejudice. Theirs will be the judgments of un- 
prejudiced jurors. Their sympathies will ever be in 
favor of the weaker members of society rather than the 
more powerful. Their vision for the uplift of the world 
cannot but be helpful in solving the problems of so- 
ciety. It is true that the home will be their special in- 
terest, but do they not understand that happy homes 
cannot be built in an environment of legalized poverty? 
The women of this nation know as well as any class of 
society that the fetters that have bound the hands of the 
labor of this nation in an industrial slavery, and the 
conditions under which such an industrial slavery has 
been made possible in this christian nation must be re- 
moved. They know, too, that in order to accomplish 
these things the first thing that must be done, and that 
thing is imperative, is to make the government easily 
responsive to the people. 

Under a responsive government the problems will be 
studied by the men and women who will render their 
verdict at the ballot box, and when this is made possible, 
no man need fear what the verdict will be, for under 
such a government the men who seek special privilege 
can have no chance to avoid the light of public educa- 
tion before the verdict is rendered at the polls. 

Can any man have a just conception of what this 
world would be under such a government as we pro- 
pose? Sixty per cent of the homes of this nation are at 



TO NEWLY ENFRANCHISED WOMEN OF AMERICA 221 

this time occupied by tenants. If this nation can hope 
to live, tenancy must give way to ownership. At this 
moment the stored energy of the nation drawing interest 
reaches far above a hundred billion dollars. No free 
people can long withstand this awful handicap. More 
than ninety per cent of the wealth that the labor of the 
nation has brought into existence is owned by two per 
cent of the people. No nation can long endure under 
auch a handicap of poverty as this reveals. 

The over-riches that is revealed by our ledger was 
made possible by legislation that gave special privileges, 
and the great fortunes that have been amassed under 
those laws must be returned to the people who produced 
them, not by any process of confiscation, not by force, 
but by peaceful methods of legal enactment. 

Mothers of America! You have been granted the 
power of the ballot just in time to save the nation. 
Your mother heart will respond to such a call for help 
as this will be, for the application of the remedies will 
mean that the American government will be wrested 
from the monopolies, and trusts, and from pie- counter 
politicians and restored to the people, and American 
home life will make possible the realization of that Life, 
Liberty and Happiness that was the promise of the 
fathers of the Eepublic. 



228 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Chapter XIV 

WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 

Have the people of this generation sensed the spirit 
of the Revolutionary fathers as they fought the battles 
against the powers of autocracy that were trying to 
crush from this land the spirit of freedom and religious 
liberty? 

Have they lost that vision of a new world that so in- 
spired the fathers of the republic and promised to them 
the end of kings and royalty and autocracy and injus- 
tice? 

Have they forgotten that doctrine of human rights 
that was written into the ethics of this new world when 
Thomas Jefferson said, "All men are created equal, and 
endowed with certain inalienable rights. Among these 
are the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Hap- 
piness?" 

Has this generation stopped in its wild chase after 
the almighty dollar to ask, "What is Life?" and "What 
is Liberty?" and "What is Happiness?" 

The power of the mind of man has been the wonder 
of every age, but have we forgotten that the mind is 
just as certainly the power of the nation as the mind of 
a man is the power behind the man? 

The mind of a nation, and when a nation speaks! 
Who can grasp the meaning of those words? 

The early philosophy of all the past ages was em- 
bodied in the practical solution of the problems of gov- 
ernment as they were expressed in the work of our fore- 
fathers in our constitution, but not yet has come to the 
world the real meaning of a government of the people, 
for the people, and by the people. 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 220 

The work of this generation is to reincarnate the 
spirit of the Revolutionary fathers, and to restore to the 
people in that spirit whatever has been lost in the evolu- 
tion of the government that represents the world's com- 
mercial and industrial changes. 

We must get back to first principles. We must lay 
some new foundations. We must make our government 
responsive to the people. We must so change the ma- 
chinery for making laws as to make it easy for the 
people to speak their mind upon great questions. We 
must guard well every demand for new laws, lest those 
demands shall come from people who seek special priv- 
ilege, instead of from people who seek the welfare of all. 

No period of the world's history has witnessed such 
advancement in civilization and in wealth as the era of 
progress through which we have just passed. God has 
unlocked the storehouses of His eternal power and let 
the children of men possess more of His hidden mys- 
teries than has ever been entrusted to them since the be- 
ginning of the world. Messages go round the world 
today with the fleetness of thought. We have gathered 
the electric waves and attuned them to sensitive instru- 
ments with which we read the thoughts of man across 
waters and the land alike. By the unlocking of that 
storehouse of hidden secrets, man has come to know 
God's wonderful powers, and his mind has harnessed 
those powers of nature and applied them to his comfort 
and happiness. 

Did God withhold these secrets from man for so many 
years because He knew that man would apply them to 
selfish purposes, instead of applying them to the bring- 
ing of happiness for all men alike? Have we applied 
the powers so entrusted to us for the good of all the 
people? Our civilization must answer this question, and 



230 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

if that answer shall be that selfishness has applied to 
individual gain the powers that God so long withheld, I 
fear that He will come in His wrath and destroy what 
we have built, and then demand that we return the 
talents He has given us. God gave man dominion over 
all the earth. Through all the ages that have passed 
the power of God has been present in every hidden wave 
of electricity and in steam and in mechanical power, but 
through all those ages until recently man has never 
recognized them as his friend. 

Have we come to think that because so much has been 
given to this generation, the inner chamber of God's 
storehouse of hidden mysteries has been unlocked? Let 
us not deceive ourselves. The world is on trial. The 
good things we enjoy today are only a test of our will- 
ingness to use aright those already given. In the inner 
chamber of God's storehouse of eternal truth are hidden 
secrets that as far transcend the revelations to this gen- 
eration of men as the beauties of heaven transcend the 
beauties of earth. Man has never understood that first 
written will in which God gave to Adam, and through 
him to all the world, the inheritance of his wonderful 
creation. 

Since that great civil struggle in which we purged 
ourselves of chattel slavery we have enjoyed the great- 
est era of prosperity that has ever been enjoyed by any 
country in any age; but with all the prosperity, and 
with all the wealth and power, and with all the labor- 
saving inventions that have been brought to man, we 
are living in a period of unrest and discontent. With 
the old civilization we have buried the rules by which 
that civilization was applied. 

We have boasted how sacredly our constitution guards 
the rights of property, but we have forgotten that the 



WHEN A NATION SPEAK 8 231 

right to life and the right to live and labor for the 
bread of life are far superior to any right that property 
should have enjoyed. 

It sounds well to boast of the protection of property, 
but is it not about time this great government thought 
something of the rights of its weaker citizens? 

This is a nation of freemen. They are proud of the 
thrift of the people. They are industrious, but they be- 
lieve in honest industry. They never dreamed in the 
early days that the peaceful conquest of the nation was 
being effected through interest-privilege seekers. The 
wealth of this nation was created by honest toil, and 
whether it represents the last meal in the home of the 
honest toiler or the watered stock in a great corporation, 
it was earned by the toil of the same men. The rich 
men of our country hold it today by right of the law, 
but is there not a higher law by which the final judg- 
ments of the world are made? God said, "In the sweat 
of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 

The stored energy of this nation, with its interest 
tributes in one form or another, is sapping the very life 
of this republic. It is demanding its pound of flesh as 
the sun sets upon the day's toil, and every day the de- 
mand will be harder for the people to meet. Their bur- 
dens are now heavier than they can bear. On the farms 
and in the factories they produce the wealth that fills 
our storehouses every year, but they have no right to say 
who shall go to those storehouses and receive the things 
that the labor of the nation has produced. 

If it is a fact that the labor of this nation is sweating 
in its workhouses and on its farms to support a hoard 
of idlers who neither work nor hold in good esteem 
those who do, it is time such a condition shall end. Did 
Holv Writ misstate the doctrines of the Lord when it 



232 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

said, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat?" 
Pitiful poverty and over-riches will no more thrive on 
the free soil of America than master and slave. But 
when I speak of poverty, I do not mean the poverty 
that is the result of indolence, but the poverty that we 
know as the finished product of exploitation. Were 
some men born to serve, while other men were born to 
be served? Is this land of the free destined to become a 
land of serfs? Must it be said that a people born to a 
heritage of freedom and liberty will be enslaved without 
a protest or a murmur? Must the great industries of 
this nation stand before the coining generations as a 
monument to the dead heroes of toil who went to un- 
timely graves while they were building them? Do the 
people who live in the city of toil owe to their masters 
that wealth be piled up at the price of blood? Fellow 
Countrymen ! If these things be true, we do not wonder 
at the stinging words of Rudyard Kipling when he said 
in his poem, "The City of Toil," 

"We have fed you all for a thousand years, and you hail 

us still unfed, 
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth but 

marks the workers dead; 
We have yielded our best to give you rest, and you lie 

on crimson wool, 
For if blood be the price of all your wealth, good God 

we ha' paid it in full. 

"There's never a mine blown skyward now, but we're 

buried alive with you, 
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now but we're 

the ghastly crew, 
Go, reckon the dead by the forges red, and the factories 

where you spin, 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 233 

If blood be the price of your accursed wealth, good 
God, we ha' paid it in. 

We have fed you all for a thousand years, for that was 

our doom you know, 
From the days when you chained us in your fields, to 

the strike of a week ago; 
You have eaten our lives, our babes and our wives, and 

we're told its your legal share, 
But if blood is the price of your lawful wealth, good 

God, we ha' bought it fair." 

We have called attention in another chapter to the 
awful burden of debt that somehow has been heaped 
upon the American people. Insiduously these debts have 
increased until at this time the problem is not, "How 
can the debts be paid," but "Can they ever be paid?" 
The farms are mortgaged. School districts are bonded 
to the legal limit. Cities are hopelessly in debt. Coun- 
ties are in the clutches of obligations for future pay- 
ments. States are laboring under the same handicap. 
Business from the corner grocery to the largest concerns 
is being done on credit. Individual credit is strained to 
the limit. Banks are failing everywhere. Debt and 
credit are so firmly written into the business of the 
world that by the commercial blue books of every com- 
munity every- man's ability to pay debts is measured by 
the standard of the dollar. 

Is anyone able to explain just how this awful burden 
of debt has been fastened upon the American people? 
Will any thoughtful man subscribe to the theory that 
the nation's obligations for future payment represent 
the natural economic evolution of commercial transac- 
tions? 

America is today paying more than seven billion dol- 



234 BUILDINQ A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

lars of interest. This includes the government, mu- 
nicipal and bonded debts as well as the debts of every 
character. The government's annual budget reaches 
above five billion dollars. The tax-free bonds of the 
government amount to more than eighteen billion dol- 
lars, while the tax-free mortgages amount to more than 
twenty-seven billion dollars. The tax-free municipal 
securities amount to more than four billion dollars and 
under the federal loan system bonds already issued 
amount to an enormous sum. Then to add to all these 
burdens the people are annually paying the premium on 
life insurance policies amounting to forty-five billion 
dollars. These are only a part of the obligations of the 
nation that annually demand interest tribute in one form 
or another, and the most serious part of the problem is 
found in the fact that a very large part of these vast 
accumultions of this wealth, being invested in tax-free 
securities, is thereby exempted from the payment of tax 
that would otherwise be assessed against those who 
would be obliged to pay an income tax. We noted in 
another chapter that real estate tax-free mortgages have 
been a very favored investment, but just how favored 
they have been will be better understood when their 
effect on the income taxes of a rich man is considered. 
To a man having an income of five hundred thousand 
dollars a four per cent tax-free bond is as desirable as a 
taxable bond drawing 13.79 per cent. The larger the 
income the more valuable the investment to the rich 
who, by side-stepping, might avoid their income tax. 

In this connection we might also call attention to the 
desirability of government bonds as a favored invest- 
ment, since the effect would doubtless be the same with 
these as with the tax-free real estate mortgages. 

If anyone has doubt about these bonds being favored 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 235 

as an investment by the rich, and the very rich, they 
might have had a more concrete example of their value 
as a preferred investment at the time when there were 
millions of dollars of these bonds on the market at 
eighty-five cents on the dollar. 

Let no man be misled into the belief that the interest 
we must pay on these tax-free mortgages is not a de- 
mand upon the labor of this nation just the same as 
though it was a taxable obligation. Every dollar of that 
great sum of human energy that must be paid as interest 
is a tax upon the products of the labor of this nation. 

This nation's burdens are already heavier than it can 
bear. If the backs of this generation cannot bear the 
burden, then there is only one alternative, and that al- 
ternative is to unload upon the backs of your children 
and your children's children the awful burden that you 
should have borne. 

It will not do to delay the settlement of this nation's 
problem of debt to another generation. The debts are 
every year increasing. Big business and these interest 
accumulations every year are converting these accumula- 
tions into the products of toil and converting those 
products into more money to loan to the people. In 
only a few years the interest alone will double the debts, 
and then in a few more years they will triple them, and 
then what? 

Our beloved Lincoln, speaking at the close of the civil 
war, said, "This struggle has had only to do with slave 
labor, but behind this is an impending crisis of which in 
my present position I could not be justified were I to 
omit raising a warning voice against this approach of 
despotism. It is the effort to place capital on an equal 
footing with labor in the structure of government," and 
in the same appeal he said, "Beware of surrendering a 



236 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

political power which you already possess, and which if 
surrendered will surely close the doors of advancement 
against you and fix new disabilities and burdens, until 
all of liberty will be lost." 

These words after fifty years of exploitation by the 
capitalistic classes, seem like a prophecy direct from 
Heaven. Has the prophecy been fulfilled? My Coun- 
trymen ! As I study the problems of these times ; as I 
read in the great ledger balances of the nation our record 
of debt ; as I feel the iron hand of the power of money 
in the making of laws of the nation; as I ponder over 
the power of hoarded millions to hoard more, and to 
dictate to labor and to law makers alike ; as I view their 
palaces of luxury on the hill and the tenements of toil 
in the valley; as I study the power of money to gather 
income without effort, and then compare it with the 
power of man to gather income by the sweat of honest 
toil, I can only think that the prophecy of that great 
man has been fulfilled. 

You will agree with me that the prophecjr has been 
fulfilled, and you will agree with me when I say that 
the government of this nation must be restored to the 
people from whom it has so ruthlessly been wrested. 
The restoration of this government to the people will be 
the greatest struggle that has ever been staged in this 
nation and in the world since the beginning of organized 
government. In that struggle a united people must go 
forward in a devout spirit of Christian fellowship and 
write into the laws of this land, and into the hearts of 
its people, the remedies that must be applied, and then 
with the vigor of christian soldiers we must see that the 
laws so enacted are administered in the fear of God. 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 237 

Our New Nationalism 

Have the people of this great government come to 
realize how slow we are to reject the old teachers and 
accept the new things that have come to us as the result 
of years of education and experience? Do the people 
realize just how deep-seated are the prejudices of our 
earl} 7 teachings? Do we understand in America how 
hard it has ever been to turn our backs upon the teach- 
ings of bygone days, and our faces to the front where 
we can look into a great future? Someone has said that 
"history is philosophy teaching by example." If this is 
true, then we must remember that the history of the 
past may furnish a guide to a better future by pointing 
out the errors of the past. 

The last half century of industrial strife in America, 
and the great conflict out of which the world is just 
emerging, have brought America face to face with two 
of the greatest problems that have ever gripped the 
world. These problems are demanding solution, not in 
America alone, but in the entire civilized world. These 
are the problems of our New Nationalism and the prob- 
lems of our international relations. To these complex 
questions we must give a candid and thoughtful consid- 
eration, because their solution is sure to pave the way 
either to a great future or to a national disaster. 

The individualism of half a century ago has given 
place to the power of organization that is the dominant 
force in America in this generation. Organized capital 
controls the industries of the nation at this time. It 
owns our mines, our railroads, our factories, and every 
means of distribution. The corporations of two decades 
ago have become the giant trusts of this generation. 
Their power is the most alarming symptom of impend- 
ing disaster in America at this time. The vision of the 



238 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

modern trust is a vision of power. The old theory of a 
distinct individualism has been swallowed up in the 
modern trust, and the spirit of money making in the 
trust has gone mad. 

The people of the nation understand the power of the 
trust to fix prices, and its power to exploit the labor of 
the nation is not disputed in any field of action. It is 
true that the trusts own the machines, but it is also true 
that it takes men and women to run the machines, and 
the industry that forgets the men and women who do 
the manual labor to run those machines must, the mo- 
ment it forgets, face certain ruin. 

Tenancy and usury are the blight of the American 
home. They furnish an unhealthful atmosphere in 
which to develop a strong national life. We must paint 
a new picture of America. It must show every land- 
scape dotted over with happy homes. Permanency must 
be written in every structure, and happiness and con- 
tentment must be reflected in every dooryard. Organ- 
ized wealth must get a new vision of the rights of men, 
and machines, and money, and organized capital and 
organized labor must be bound together in a contract of 
friendly co-operation. Such a friendly co-operation will 
bring contentment where discontent reigned, plenty 
where there was abject poverty, and happiness where 
there was nothing but anxiety and sorrow. 

The great war brought to the world a new vision of 
international rights, and it proclaimed for the first time 
in all history the rights of small and large nations alike. 
That vision was written into the terms of the armistice, 
and it was later written into the terms of the Treaty of 
Versailles. When that immortal document was pre- 
sented to our senate for ratification the people came to 
know for the first time that militarism is an industry. 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 239 

It was then that they learned that wars are the birth- 
right of militarism and that battlefields are their har- 
vests. This will answer in a measure at least why our 
senate refused to ratify the Versailles treaty. 

The war, the League of Nations and its world court, 
have written into world thought a new internationalism 
that takes account of the rights of the weakest nations 
of earth, and the world has come to know that in our 
twentieth century civilization no nation can live alone. 

Let no man be deceived. Ours is a wonderful nation, 
and its cleavage in world affairs cannot be minimized, 
but on the eve of the disarmament conference it is in so 
critical a position that it can build for a great and per- 
manent future, or lay the foundation for a national 
disaster at home. 

This great nation wants peace. It believes that dis- 
armament must precede peace, but it knows that partial 
disarmament can never settle the question of world 
peace, for as long as battleships plough the great oceans 
of the world, the peace of the world will be in danger. 

From every fireside of America a fervent hope and 
prayer went up to heaven for the ratification of the 
Versailles treaty, and now that its doom has been writ- 
ten into the history of this nation we will again hope 
and pray that some arrangement may be effected that 
will insure an enduring world peace. Will the hope be 
realized? Will our prayers be answered? These ques- 
tions are on the lip or in the heart of every true Amer- 
ican. Is world peace not possible of achievement? Is 
the Christianity of the world still impotent? We have 
proudly boasted that this is a christian nation. These 
are times for self-examination. Are we christian? Is 
our government christian? Is the spirit of individual- 
ism that has built in America the greatest trust system 



240 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

that ever disgraced the world, christian? Is the indus- 
trial war that has so long been going on between capi- 
tal and labor christian? Do the tenements in the valley 
and the mansions of their masters on the hill tell a 
story of the application of the spirit Christ taught? Is 
the story of the unconscionable profiteering through 
which we are just passing such a story as to inspire us 
to believe that this is indeed a christian nation. May it 
truthfully be said that we are a christian nation while 
it is possible and a fact that ninety-six men in our 
country own property drawing incomes amounting to 
from $750,000 to $1,000,000 each, annually? Can we 
think that in this Christian land of plenty, in this land 
of opportunity, sixty per cent of the farms of the nation 
are being tilled by tenants? 

This is not a christian nation. It is a nation of un- 
godly, and unconscienciable selfishness. The problem 
of over-riches and the problem of debt are the two mas- 
ter problems of humanity. Who is wise enough to bring 
the solution of these problems to the world? 

We have pointed out in our weakness what militar- 
ism and war must mean to the world. We have tried to 
impress this nation with the dangers that are lurking 
in un-Americanized foreigners that are today congre- 
gated in the great commercial centers of the nation. We 
have told the people of the deadly menace of over- 
riches that at this time has changed our once happy 
homes of ownership into an un-American condition of 
tenancy. We have pointed out the futility of depend- 
ing upon our system of "government by party" to right 
the wrongs of the nation; we have called attention to 
the power of organization, and we have tried to make 
clear that if this nation may hope to realize the ideals 
of the fathers of the republic, there is only one sure 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 241 

road, and that road leads into the organization of the 
forces of the christians of America, the newly enfran- 
chised women, and that great army of men and women 
who must labor from year end to year end for their 
daily bread into an army of righteousness, determined to 
build upon the ruins of "government by party" the 
greatest christian democracy that has ever blessed the 
world. 

What an army for reform this would be. Powerful 
enough in numbers, and in christian spirit, to move this 
great republic into any program of righteousness with- 
out delay. 

Let no man misunderstand our hopes and aspirations 
for the immediate power of such an organization. We 
are a nation of many minds and of many and diversi- 
fied interests. The politicians will be against us from 
the beginning. The "pie counter" will warp their judg- 
ment. The organized exploiters of labor will howl their 
disapproval. The spirit of militarism in this nation, 
that thrives only by planting discontent that it may 
reap a harvest of war, will raise its voice in protest, for 
the spirit of militarism is not yet dead. It will be a 
peaceful revolution in which the doctrines of the "Christ 
applied to government" will be pitted against the un- 
curbed powers of selfishness and greed in the world, and 
that revolution will never end until the wrongs that 
afflict humanity shall be righted. If a christian democ- 
racy cannot bring the answer of a christian government 
to this nation, then we must look for other solutions to 
the problems that confront us. If the Christianity of 
this nation will not use its great power and its great 
army of christian voters to aid in this peaceful revolu- 
tion, then the world has failed and Christianity can 
have no message for a lost world. 

17 



242 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Is this not the doctrine that Christ taught when He 
was here among men? His religion was so simple that 
even His own disciples did not understand it. He said, 
"I was an hungered and ye gave me meat, thirsty and 
ye gave me drink, I was a stranger and ye took me in, 
naked and ye clothed me, sick and ye visited me, in 
prison and ye came unto me." When His disciples 
heard these things they were amazed, and they said, 
"Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered and gave Thee 
meat, or a stranger and took Thee in, or naked and 
clothed Thee, or when saw we Thee sick and in prison 
and came unto Thee?" The Lord said, "Verily I say 
unto you, inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me." This is the re- 
ligion of human need, satisfied by human sympathy. 
It is the answer of the brotherhood of man applied to 
human need. Can it be applied in our generation? It 
can be applied, and its application is the greatest chal- 
lenge that has ever come to the christian people of 
America. It is the doctrine of human need answered 
through the application of human law. 

Men and women of America! It is a proud boast 
that ours is a christian nation. In a sense that proud 
boast has been realized, but in a broader and a more 
vital sense it has never been true. The great war 
brought to the world a vision of a new internationalism, 
and to this nation a new vision of nationalism, and it 
must bring to the christian people of this nation and to 
the christian churches a new and a broader vision of the 
meaning of Christianity. If this is a christian nation 
it must get a vision of a christian state and a christian 
nation. The day of individualism in Christianity is 
past. The churches must get the vision of a christian- 
ized state and nation, and a christianized state and na- 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 2^3 

tion can mean nothing less than that the state and 
nation must be christianized by law. 

The early teachings of the fathers that the doctrines 
of a separation of church and state were indispensable 
to a stable government and the influence of the church 
may have been right in that generation, but the churches 
of this nation might as well try to dam the waters of 
Niagara River with shovels as to curb the unrighteous 
selfishness of this commercial generation unless they can 
impress the doctrines of the Christ in law. If we chris- 
tianize government, we must christianize law. If we 
christianize law, we must do it at the ballot box. The 
ballot box exerts no influence except through majorities. 
Majorities are simply the expression of the public mind. 
The public mind is a creature of education. 

When a Nation Speaks. This is a wonderful vision, 
but is it broad enough? Shall we change it to say, 
"When a Christian Nation Speaks?" If America is in- 
deed a christian nation, then it will not so much matter, 
but are the christian churches ready to unite as one man 
in a program of reform that is to mean so much to the 
future of the world as the program we have outlined? 
It will little matter whether they endorse and approve 
every sentiment we have expressed unless the}^ are will- 
ing to carry their endorsement to the polls and give ex- 
pression of their approval in the ballot box. 

We have plead for the vision of a Christian Democ- 
racy in this nation, because a Christian democracy must 
mean that the great army of christian men and women 
of the land under a christian democracy will furnish the 
greatest school for problem solving that has ever been 
organized on earth. It will not only furnish the means 
of education, but it will furnish the machinery through 
which the nation can speak its mind upon the great 
problems of the government. 



2U BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

When a nation speaks under a christian democracy 
the over-riches of a few men will never again be per- 
mitted to shame this land by the blight of tenancy in- 
stead of making it blossom with happy homes. Human 
want in the midst of plenty will be a thing unknown. 
Unemployment and its consequent poverty will never 
again disgrace our civilization. 

Churches or America! Women of our great coun- 
try! Men and women who belong to that great army 
who are doing the labor of the world, the power in the 
political and social revolution which we propose is in 
your hands as long as you have the ballot. Could I 
paint a picture of the world after the political war that 
has been in progress for a hundred years has been closed 
and after an armistice has been signed and sealed in 
which this nation has purged itself of that ulcer of 
political prejudice that has so long stood in the way of 
material progress, I would be able with such a picture 
to show my readers more in a moment of time than my 
poor words can bring to them through great effort. The 
challenge of the world today is men and women who 
have a vision of righteousness and the bravery and wis- 
dom to assume leadership in this great struggle for a 
new world in which the right of every human being 
shall be the supreme issue and be fought to a righteous 
conclusion. Shall we hope to get the men and women? 
Is America willing to be the grave in which the hopes 
of the world shall be entombed? Shall we forget our 
immortal trust? O America, yours was a great oppor- 
tunity, and a great responsibility. You have had a 
glorious past, but your future is ahead. Today is ours, 
but the tomorrow of the world belongs to our children. 
What shall that tomorrow be? 



WHEN A NATION SPEAKS 21,5 

God is calling today for men and women to stand 
guard on the watch-towers of American Liberty as He 
never called before. Will He find the men and women? 

The End. 



SUBJECT INDEX 

Chapter I — Introduction Page 

Creation — In the beginning, God 1 

God's penalty for the first sin 2 

Eden. "Am I my brother's keeper?" 4 

A babe was born in Bethlehem 4 

Religious Liberty— the first principle of a real civiliza- 
tion 5 

"All men are created equal" 7 

Thoughtless America, you are basking in the sunshine 

of youth 9 

Chapter II— What Is Life? 12 

Jefferson's conception of life 13 

A rich man's conception of life 14 

A woman's conception of life 14 

A noted clergyman's conception of life 16 

A sociologist's conception of life 16 

Do we enjoy the protection promised by our constitu- 
tion? 17 

Chapter III— The Blight of War 20 

If our writers could dramatize the peaceful struggles, 

etc 20 

War's awful cost 21 

Poison gases in the next war... 22 

There is a remedy 22 

Dr. Rosa on the cost of war 23 

Painter, paint a picture 24 

We have built up a militarism 25 

Disarmament — the symbol of a new hope 25 

Appropriations for war and agriculture 26 

Our pension bills for past wars 26 

Our military aristocracy *. 27 

Militarism must be destroyed 27 

An American boy's life is worth just $47 28 

Industrial isolation 30 

America's greatness 30 

World peace was the ideal of our boys 31 

(247) 



248 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Page 
Who was responsible for the defeat of the Versailles 

treaty? 31 

The defeat of the Versailles treaty was an insult to 

our boys 32 

The League of Nations was our child 33 

What it cost to defeat the League 33 

A mother speaks 34 

Chapter IV— A World Peace 37 

"To you from failing hands we throw the torch" 39 

Three months of the League of Nations 40 

Leon Bourgeois (address) 41 

Lord Curzon, for the British Empire 41 

The empty chair 41 

"Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting 42 

America has not yet spoken upon war 43 

Chapter V— The Nation's Dance of Death 45 

Legislatures have run wild 48 

The problems of revenue 48 

Table of rural assessment, 1920 51 

Table of urban assessment, 1920 52 

Tax-free mortgages 55 

The loan shark law 57 

The assessment of credits 58 

Assessment of money in banks 60 

Assessment of merchandise 61 

Assessment of book accounts 62 

Assessment of stocks of corporations 63 

Public service corporations 64 

A righteous revenue law the remedy 69 

A belated testimony -. 73 

Money has never been assessed 74 

Assessment of merchandise 74 

Assessment of corporations 74 

Constitutional provisions 75 

Tangible and intangible property 76 

Premeditated exemption of property 76 

We need more money, not more tax-drones and tax- 
dodgers 77 

A crime against the taxpayers 77 



SUBJECT INDEX 2 J/9 

page 

Chapter VI — Government by Party 78 

Washington on the danger of the party spirit 78 

Are political parties necessary? 80 

Partisanship and the slavery question 81 

Partisanship and prohibition 82 

Partisanship and suffrage 83 

The party label 86 

Why a legislature? 86 

Law-making is creative 88 

Why two houses of a legislative body? 90 

A national referendum 97 

A presidential primary 97 

Initiative and recall...- 98 

Chapter VII — Competition ' 101 

The evolution of economics 101 

Competition means that the strong win 103 

The origin of competition 105 

Honest competition 106 

The trusts, their policies and powers 112 

The law of "The survival of the fittest" 113 

Lloyd George and a minimum wage 114 

Standardization is the remedy 116 

Chapter VIII— Arbitration 117 

Men ask, "Is it lawful?" not "Is it right?" 117 

Courts are being used as a means of exploitation 127 

The court's duty 127 

The lawyer's ethics 128 

Compulsory arbitration 133 

Chapter IX — Industrial Peace 137 

When industry began 137 

Labor and the machine 140 

Our power of production with machines 142 

The basic principle of industry is labor 143 

Two great problems — price and value 146 

Value as it relates to land and wheat 146 

"The dollar of our daddies" 148 

Interest 149 

The Federal Reserve Banks 149 

Where has all the money gone? 149 



250 BUILDING A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY 

Page 

The price of industrial peace ...153 

A living wage 153 

The old Roman law of ownership 155 

Labor's new obligation 156 

The problem of the grain gambler 157 

The danger of a food shortage 159 

Our national unit of super-dominance 159 

Standardization of wheat and cotton 159 

Chapter X — The Peril of American Cities 163 

Increase of foreign population 164 

The political power of our cities .. 165 

All roads lead to New York 166 

The balance of power 167 

Group political action 168 

America for Americans 169 

Home rule and the "wide open" city ...170 

Theodore Roosevelt on the menace of our American 

cities 172 

Americanization 174 

Americanized foreigners .. 175 

Foreigners, this is your adopted country 176 

Cities of America. You must beware 177 

Chapter XI — The problem of over-riches 178 

The race of life 179 

The handicap of poverty 179 

John Stuart Mills on property 181 

John Stuart Mills on inheritance 182 

Blackmore and Bancroft on inheritance tax 183 

The right of inheritance 184 

The Supreme Court of the United States on the right 

to limit inheritance 184 

Has a man a right to bequeath money he never earned?. .185 

The income tax and the nation's ledger .188 

The conquest of America .....189 

Interest gathering securities and unemployment 190 

A National fixed inheritance .....192 

A protection to minor heirs 196 

Restitution or ruin, which? 197 



SUBJECT INDEX 251 

Page 

Chapter XII — To the Christian Churches of America 199 

A personal religion .200 

The conquest of the great West -201 

John Ruskin's model church 203 

The greatest revolution 204 

The church must be aroused 205 

The Inter-Church world movement 206 

The churches must unite 208 

The power of the churches, 43,000,000 souls 210 

The challenge of the age 210 

Chapter XIII — To the Newly Enfranchised Women of 

America ...212 

The legalized saloon.. .213 

Woman's outlook upon life 214 

What will the women do? 214 

The American home 215 

Is marriage a civil contract? 215 

Where parents fail 217 

A single standard of purity 217 

God's plan of life .... 218 

The first cause of divorce 219 

Divorce 222 

Gladstone on "American divorces" 223 

The twentieth amendment 223 

Women bread-winners 224 

Woman's place in the world 225 

Women in the problem-solving campaigns of a Chris- 
tian democracy ., 225 

Chapter XIV— When a Nation Speaks 228 

The interest-burden of the people 231 

The City of Toil (Kipling) 232 

Our new nationalism and internationalism..... 237 

Is this nation Christian? 239 

Let no man misunderstand our hopes and aspirations.. 241 

"I was an hungered and Ye gave me meat" 242 

We must get a vision of a christianized state and 

nation 243 

When a nation speaks 243 

God is calling for men and women 245 



